A Supernatural Ghost Story
by by xandria
Summary: What happens when Sam&Dean fall into a ghoststory of their own? only this time the ghost wont stay dead-and Sams ok with that-but what happens when Dean finds out? Horsemen, lucifer, demons and now ghost stalkers? things are never as simple as they seem
1. Chapter 1

Okay, forage into fan fiction! Here we go...

A Supernatural Ghost Story

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Synopsis: She couldn't remember ever seeing Sam's skin not darkened and marked by bruises and scrapes. Or fingers rough and red from washing the blood out of his clothes at night, before perching on the edge of his bed and watching him sleep. If only she could touch him…just once, then her life would be complete. But then, since when had anything even remotely associated with the Winchester Brothers ever resulted in a happily ever after ending? For that matter, since when was life something she had to worry about anymore?

Warning and Disclaimer; I do not own the Supernatural universe. The characters, story, setting and scenery are all the products of the much more talented and creative minds, more specifically the clearly wonderfully twisted brains of Kripke and Singer. I'm just borrowing them to play with for a few hours, I promise they'll be returned in reasonably the same condition…okay maybe a little more ravished than originally! (Fair warning…*evil grin*)

A/N; Bet you thought that I was coming back to Dean again huh? Well I'm an equal opportunity ravisher and after everything I put Sammy through in the last story, I figured it was about time he got some too. ;) Truthfully, I've been waiting forever for another story to hit me—much like this one has in the middle of the night—and as much as I'd like to do that sequel to "_A Supernatural Quickie_" I've been promising, it'll have to wait just a little bit longer. Gives me more time to figure out things to do with Dean in the dark doesn't it? Lol

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A Supernatural Ghost Story: Ch. 1;

Sam suppressed a groan as Dean swerved the impala into the motel parking lot, taking the turn just shy of a speed that would have made the wheels squeal and skid on the wet pavement. His brother liked to take chances, pushing things to the edge of their endurance like that and then pulling back right before the breaking point; Sam knew that but even still he couldn't help the feeling of resentment that welled up in him, even after all this time, as his injured arm was banged against the door with the turn.

"Sorry," Dean mouthed, parking the car and leaning in to check the blood that dripped down Sam's arm and onto the floor despite the heavy bandage, hastily made out of the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped tight around his forearm. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Sam said, clenching his teeth and nodding. He knew that Dean's concern was just as real as his need to get out the restless energy that has caused him to forget about how fast he was driving in the first place. "Just get us a room, and I'll grab the gear."

Dean cast him one last searching look, before pushing out of the car and jogging quickly over to the motel office; brightly lit in defense against the darkness of the night and the particular brand of customers this area of town usually catered to.

Sam leaned back into the seat for a moment, resting his eyes and trying to breathe through the pain—it was an old trick a hunter learned early; sometimes if you could hyper oxygenate, get enough air into your system, it would help deal with the pain…something about the release of endorphins or adrenalin…but then biology had never been Sam's strength, even when he was at school…

He jerked his eyes open and pushed open the door of the car, getting out quickly and feeling his head spin slightly with the fast movement. The cool air was a shock on his skin, but he welcomed the distraction. If he wasn't careful thoughts of school and classes, coffee shops and professors would lead back to blonde hair shining in the sun, or the look of her skin, bare and smooth against their dark sheets…

It had been years but still, even after all this time and all the different faces and places in between, nights like this his mind would wander back to Her. Jessica was probably the first woman he'd ever loved…the first person--other than Dean-- who he felt loved by in return…but in the years since her death, even after the driving quest to kill the yellow-eyed-demon that had killed both her and his mother was finally over, she'd come to mean something more to Sam. Jess was everything normal and good and innocent in the world; she represented the sum of a life that he was never going to be able to have. A decent and paying day job with all the frustrations and paperwork that it involved, a home to come back to at the end of the day and grass that needed mowing or garbage to be taken out…..someone waiting for you who will hold you in their arms all night long; a nine-to-five life.

Sam opened his eyes, body automatically tensing at the sound of shoes smacking against the wet pavement behind before relaxing at the familiar rhythm of Dean's gait. He moved around the car, trying not to too obviously favour his right side and opened the drunk. Dropping in his gun, for once not caring if it wasn't concealed in the hidden compartment, he hefted his bag over his shoulder and grabbing Dean's in his good hand, moved towards the door.

Dean met him before he'd even taken two steps, pulling both bags out of his hands. "What do you think you're doing Sammy?" Dean eyed him skeptically, jingling the keys up in front of his face until Sam's hand closed over them. "You're getting blood on my favorite duffle."

Sam smirked, used to his brothers' particular way of showing affection and concern. "Sorry," he said, "Wouldn't want to mar the oil stains."

Dean swung the bag—ever so gently—to brush against Sam's left leg in a mock blow while he fumbled with the keys at the door. Finally it swung open and a particularly hideous shade of green shag carpet met Sam's eyes as he stepped inside, flicking on the light and then moving out of the way so Dean could maneuver himself and the bags inside the narrow doorway.

Sam heard the door slam shut as he collapsed onto the nearest bed, cradling his arm and beginning to pick at the edges of the knot that held the makeshift bandage on.

"So just your average werewolf hunt, huh Dean?" he asked, pulling the knot free and working at uncoiling the cloth slowly.

"How was I supposed to know that the police reports were actually for a rabid dog and there was really a hell hound in the area?" Dean replied, dumping out Sam's bag and rifling through the clothes and books until he found the small metal first aide kit. "It sounded like a nice good old fashioned simple hunt…I thought after everything, well, we could use something simple and straight forward. Too good to resist you know?"

Sam grunted uncommitted-ly as he finally pulled the last loop of fabric off and saw the deep punctures and slashes that ringed his forearm…if Dean had been even a few seconds slower with that shot gun he might have lost his hand…and most of the arm that it was attached to.

"Come 'ere," Dean grabbed a towel from the bathroom and came over, kneeling before Sam on the bed. "Let's take a look." He carefully rotated Sam's arm, checking each wound and steadfastly ignoring when Sam winced. "It's not that bad," Dean proclaimed, hating the way his stomach lurched as it always did at the sight of his baby brother covered in blood. "A few of these gashes could use stitches, but I'll patch you up and you're lucky you know…"

Sam gave Dean his most withering incredulous look, as his brother wiped off what blood he could and threaded some dental floss onto a needle.

"If it had been the dog that bit you instead of the hell hound you'd have to be getting some pretty painful rabies shots right about now."

"Great, you always manage to find the bright side Dean," Sam said sardonically then swore as the needle dipped into his skin and Dean started the first stitch of many.

* * *

It was late, or very early depending on how you thought about time, and the sky was that dull grey that meant that dawn was coming but wasn't quite here yet. A last signal for anything lurking in the shadows that they should soon find a dark place to wait out the day. If there was anything still waiting in those shadows that was. It had spread like wildfire, or the juiciest of gossip in a small town, that the Winchesters had killed one of the devils' hell hounds in town earlier that night. Everything else had basically took that as a good sign that it was time for them to move on; anyone who would mess with hell hounds was generally not someone they wanted to get to know. And for those few who were still neutral in this battle between heaven and hell over the dominion of the earth, it didn't matter if that insane person was the devil themselves or just a pair of mortal brothers who had somehow gotten mixed up in angelic wars.

But to one person it mattered very much.

She waited in the shadows…it seemed sometimes like they were all she'd ever known, that gray darkness before the dawn, and the shadows she saw in Sam Winchester's eyes. They defined her as surely as the name and life that was beginning to get so hard to remember.

She sat on the edge of the bed, one hand absentmindedly moving in the air over the coverlet near his feet and watched as he slept. Dean was a motionless lump from the moment his head hit the pillow at night to when the sun started creeping around the edges of the blinds. But Sammy was another story; tonight he tossed, rolling restlessly as if trying to escape something even in his dreams. There were fresh bruises on his skin, a new bandage over his arm….she'd heard the whispers about the hell hound, had been afraid for him.

She longed to run her fingers through the lengths of brown hair that fell forward into his eyes, to brush it gently off his forehead and smooth the worry lines that appeared there even in sleep.

She'd tried once, long ago now it seemed. Sam had been younger then, his hair shorter and something innocent about him still. That was before his father died, before he knew about the demon blood and that there was any such thing as angels or hell. Before he'd lost his brother to a promise made at night on a cross-roads. That very night she'd tried, watching the tears roll down his face in the darkness and feeling her heart that she couldn't remember beating break with his pain…all she'd wanted was to be able to hold him and tell him that it was going to be alright. Her hands and shimmered through him, the air where his body was growing thick and dense but she couldn't actually _touch_ him.

So the desire was something that she'd grown accustomed to, like the gray shadows of her days, and Sam's eyes; constant and unchanging.

Didn't make nights like tonight any easier though. Sometimes she thought that if she could just touch Sam, just talk to him once then somehow, magically, everything would be alright again. Silly fantasy she knew, but some part of her that still believed in happily ever after endings couldn't quite shake it.

So she stayed. She watched Sam as he slept, praying for something else to take away the worry lines from his forehead, to brush away his tears and ease the pain of his body and heart.

Who ever heard of happily ever after for ghosts anyways?

* * *

Sam winced as the sheet pulled at the bandage wrapped around his arm, the pain bringing him momentarily closer to wakefulness while still dreaming. He heard the sound of Dean breathing quietly in the bed beside his, and the sound as old as memory itself was comforting and familiar and he felt himself drifting off again, eyes barely opening as he turned over. In the grey light of pre-dawn he thought he glimpsed a girl standing at the end of his bed…she looked so sad and he wanted to ask her why, but before the thought even fully formed in his mind he was drawn back into dreams of coffee shops, long nights studying and golden hair in the sunlight.


	2. Chapter 2

A Supernatural Ghost Story; Chapter 2;

~two months later~

Sam sent Dean a warning look over one shoulder as his brother leaned forward carefully before drawing back, a cocktail sausage stabbed ruthlessly onto a toothpick in his hand. Dean ignored him, popping into his mouth and smiling but sobering quickly as the widow walked back into the room. Sam tried not to laugh as Dean made a face, swallowing quickly and trying to free up his mouth long enough to talk.

"Thank you so much for your hospitality mam," Sam said smoothly, giving an I-told-you glance at Dean before continuing. "We understand what a bad time this is, but we just have a few questions."

"Of course," the woman was petite and quiet, her eyes moving over the room but not focusing on much of anything. There were pictures on the mantel and a few on the walls; old sepia brown tones of children playing in yellowed glass made way for brightly coloured digital prints of laughing families picnicking. There was a large black and white in the middle of the mantel showing a young woman with dark hair and smiling eyes standing beside a medium sized man with short thin hair, dark skin and kind eyes. Sam had seen it before, the shock and grief making it almost impossible for people to acknowledge anything that reminded them of the person they'd lost. He wished for what must have been the millionth time that they could say something—anything to help her get through this. To tell her that it was going to be okay. But any explanation that they could offer would only make it worse…so…

"Can you tell me what happened again? You're statement said that your husband just walked out?"

She nodded, eyes looking down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap. "He just left. I came home and he was in the backyard working on fixing the roof of the shed before winter…I called for him to come inside and…he just walked right past me. Looked like he didn't even know me."

"Any idea where he was going?" Dean gave a grunt of frustration at being left out of the questioning, still chewing frantically, but Sam ignored him.

"No, I just can't believe that Jamie did what they're all saying that he did…he's the sweetest man in the world, never hurt a fly, I don't know what happened…"

Dean coughed, "There's been some suggestions that your husband might have been under the influence of something when he killed those people."

"Like drugs or something? Jamie never touched the stuff."

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance, this was getting far closer to the truth then where they were comfortable going.

"Well, we're not positive what exactly, but something—perhaps that he came into contact with unknowingly, that made him act that way. If you could tell us a little about what he was like right before? Did he look strange? Say anything strange?" Sam tried to bring them back on track again.

"He didn't seem to known me, or where he was, just walked right down the driveway with me calling after him."

Dean leaned forward, his tie hanging loose and brushing at the knees of his dress pants. "You're statement to the police said that his eyes looked black, do you remember saying that?"

"well yes," she stumbled. "But that had to be just a trick of the light, or my imagination. A shadow or something."

"But they looked black?"

"Yes, but nothing can do that—at least nothing that I've ever heard of.."

Here it comes, Sam thought; the moulder-and-scully-look. Every time their interviews got into the supernatural signs of a case they get the look—the half skeptical, half worried glance.

"Well," Sam said, giving his most charming and reassuring smile. "I think that's enough for us to work with for now. If there's anything else we'll be in touch. Thank you again." He'd shaken her hand and was nearly out the door before she could even stand up, Dean right at his side.

* * *

"So what do you think Sammy?" Dean said, sliding in behind the wheel of the impala and pulling off his tie. The damn thing always felt like it was choking him, he didn't know how real detectives put up with it.

"Sounds like demons are in town, but the question is why?" There had been half a dozen other cases in nearby counties—all resulting in mass homicides before the eventual self suicide. "What are they after? Is this some new scheme Lucifer's got worked up? Another horseman?"

"Something's off about this…" Dean said, pulling the car out of the driveway and heading back into town. "it doesn't feel like the big show. I mean, if big, bad and ugly are in town then why just have a couple of demons gank some people?"

"A distraction maybe? Have us show up here while he's off with the headliner somewhere else?" Sam felt a chill at the suggestion. It would be just like the devil to play with them, send them somewhere, sacrifice a few demons so that he could work on ending the world uninterrupted somewhere else. The problem was, even if that was the case, they couldn't just leave without being sure.

"Don't know," Dean cursed, wanting to turn around but not knowing where to go to. "Either way we can't leave until we're sure that the demons aren't hanging about."

"Fantastic." Sam sighed, looks like this was going to be a full investigation after all. Which meant…holding out a fist, he shook it—one—two—three…paper!

Dean laughed as he poked Sammy with his two fingers out in the shape of scissors; "Looks like you're headed to the police station, while I get to go chat up some hot nurses at the hospital…hmmm…hot nurses."

"I hope you get the geriatric ward," Sam smirked, leaning back into his seat and watching the fields go by.

"Hey, man! Why would you say something like that? That's just mean."

* * *

Sam stood on the sidewalk across the street from the police station watching Dean drive away. One of these days he was going to figure out how his brother always seemed to win at rock-paper-scissors when cute girls were involved. But until then, he was just going to have to put up with it, he sighed, stepping off the curb and walking towards the square concrete building.

* * *

She watched as Sam stepped into the shade of the building before turning back, arms crossed as if barring the way.

"He was at my wife's house this afternoon. Asking questions. He upset her, they don't understand."

The man was medium height, with thinning hair on the crown of his head. His skin had a flush of sunburn like someone working outside for long periods of time, even this late in the season, but his eyes were soft and blue.

She just stood there, waiting. Patience was something you learned and the newly dead were often more angry than wise, they forgot that things could be learned if you just waited for an opportunity.

"I didn't do those things, it made me…and now the only thing that she's going to remember is that I killed them. I can't make her hear the truth. I can't warn her."

He shifted back and forth, eyes looking over her shoulder at the door where Sam had disappeared and then down the road where Dean had disappeared from view by now.

"It's all going to end, It told me in whispers while it made me…they're going to end the world."

"And?" she shifted her stance slightly, ready for him to run. Dark hair brushed across her shoulders at the movement as if blown in some invisible breeze.

"and?! And?! Like there's something other than the end of the world that matters?" the man was nearly screaming, and the glass window of a shop behind them suddenly cracked down the middle.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact there is. How they're going to do it, what they're doing here, why you had to die, all that matters a great deal."

"What happens after I tell you? You'll fix it and make sure Marney's okay? I'll move on or something?"

"Don't know, don't care. That's up to you."

"And if I don't want to go?"

"Not my problem. I'm sure someone will be along to explain it all shortly…" she looked around, the wind picking up and sending leaves scattering across the pavement. "Death's been kind of busy lately, you'll have to excuse the delay."

"So…then you're not here for me?"

"I'm here for them," she nodded toward the building where Sam was, the people milling out front waiting for the bus, two little girls skipping down the sidewalk with parents trailing behind.

"So then you're…dead? An angel? What?"

The girl laughed quietly, dark hair swirling straight around her shoulders. "Let's just say that it might be a long wait."

A/N: Sorry for the wait! School sucks, but Happy Christmas everyone! (just so you know, reviews are definitely the best present ever *wink* *wink* *hint* *hint* lol) Happy holidays!


	3. Chapter 3

A Supernatural Ghost Story; Chapter 3;

Dean twisted the top off the dark bottle, tossing it in the general direction of the garbage before leaning back against the headboard and taking a long pull. There really was nothing like a cold beer at the end of a long day.

"Come up with anything?" Sam asked from the other bed, laptop propped up on a pillow in front of him.

"Nothing much, all our guys were pretty much healthy and normal before and other than the obvious bullet holes and bloody mess of their heads nothing much is different now. Probably not going to be having an open casket but that's kind of a bit creepy anyways."

"Dean," Sam looked up from the screen and over at his brother skeptically. "We dig up dead bodies to salt and burn them, we've decapitated vampires and god only knows what else and you think that open caskets are creepy?"

"What? You're dead, you don't need everyone looking at you." Dean looked away uncomfortably and took another swallow of beer. "Anyways," he said sitting forward, suddenly so cheerful that Sam automatically tensed.

"You and the research okay for a couple of hours?" Dean asked innocently.

"Ummm…seeing as how we've got no clues of what's going on, no real information to go off of and no idea what's coming next, researching this is like looking for a needle in a pile of needles."

"Great! So you've got something to keep you busy then. I'm just going out for a bit, you know, see if there something I can uncover that might help our um...investigation."

Sam closed his eyes so that he wouldn't roll them in frustration. "What's her name?"

"Cindi, she said she's always had a thing for a guy in uniform."

"We're supposed to be FBI agents Dean, they don't wear a uniform."

"She doesn't know that," Dean smirked, grabbing his jackets and keys off the chair by the door. He paused on hand on the handle, "You sure you'll be okay?" he even managed to look slightly guilty at walking out and leaving Sam with all the research. Again.

Sam sighed, feeling his shoulders slump he straightened and stretched. "Yeah, go on. I won't wait up."

* * *

Sam leaned back, hearing the mattress springs creak and stretched his neck from side to side, rubbing his eyes. His fingers felt stiff and cramped after hours of typing and his back was no better from being hunched over the laptop. He glanced over at the small clock on the bedside table—quarter after 2 in the morning, and a whole lot of nothing to show for it. The bed was scattered with books and photocopies of recent newspapers, weather reports and police reports. All of it adding up to no pattern that he could make out. Maybe they were just on the wrong track with all of this, maybe it was just a decoy like Dean suggested…but there was still something niggling at the back of his mind about it…if he could just put his finger on what it was…

A yawn broke his concentration, and the laptop slid to the bed beside him. Okay, a few hours of sleep wouldn't kill anyone—he hoped—and it might help him think a little clearer too.

Sam moved a few of the books and papers to the floor but ignored most of them, slumping down until his head rested on the pillow and the rest of his body was angled around the other debris on the bed. Just a few hours was all he'd need and then he'd be ready to go again. He yawned again, wishing briefly that he'd taken the time to move everything so he could pull the covers up but he barely finished the thought before his eyes were falling shut, too heavy to keep open.

She watched while Sam fell asleep, cramped and squished into the one corner of the bed that wasn't covered in research. Scanning the open pages, she sighed. They really were on the wrong track this time…if it could even be called a track that is. There were books about witches and pagan sacrifice rituals, charts about lightening and weather storms…even something about fake cults and devil worship gone wrong.

She shook her head as she came around to the top of the bed and saw Sam scowl and try to snuggle deeper into the bed, reaching for covers even asleep. Did the Winchesters even know how much they needed someone to take care of them? All the years on their own, traveling the country in the backseat of their fathers car and living out of motels and diner food had made them able to deal with almost anything that came their way, but they seemed to forget that it didn't need to be that way. That even hunting there could be some comforts and bits of normal life thrown in without betraying the job.

Taking a deep breath she tried to focus and remember what it was like to be solid and real again. To feel bruises like the one's on Sam's body, to feel the cool air on her skin. She reached for the nearest book, hands not solid enough to be able to hold it but enough to push it slightly, to shift it a few feet across the quilted bedspread. She leaned against the bed, head pounding and dizzy when it finally lay on the other side of the mattress. One down, only about another ten to go. She sighed, straightening up and moving on to the next pile of papers.

Finally when the books were moved, she slumped down to the bed beside Sam's sleeping form. He'd uncurled as she worked to free the space and it had only taken the slightest breeze to make the blanket flutter enough for him to get the hint and pull it over his shoulders.

Now for the hard part. Trying to ignore the stains on the carpet, and telling herself that it didn't matter if that really was a big spider under the bed cause it would just crawl through her anyways, she lay down on the floor beside the bed staring at the book sitting beside Sam's laptop. Large, with green printing on the hardcover front it looked like the heaviest book in the world right now, even though it was barely an inch thick.

She looked up at Sam where he lay sleeping peacefully, snuggled into the blanket now above her. She sighed, turning back to the book and focusing, she reached out and flipped the cover open. Two more pages and she was nearly lightheaded with the effort but the table of contents stood open in front of her.

Soul Stealers……..p. 32.

Including the introduction (that for some reason or another wasn't included in the page numbering but counted separately in roman numerals) that made 38 pages to turn. She sighed, taking a deep breath before continuing.

Colours started to fade at around page 20. By page 30 it was getting positively dark despite the fact that she knew the sun should be coming up. She could barely feel or see anything, her grip on consciousness fading to only the small numbers at the bottom of the page…36…two more, just two more, push…37….last one, come one, the darkness was nearly complete, the numbers barely visible through the gloom and she was having a hard time even remembering why it was so important that she keep going…she could just stop now and rest, she was so tired. Just then Sam moved, mumbling in his sleep as the light from the window reached him. One more, for Sammy, just one more—she concentrated, feeling the pressure building into one hell of a headache behind her eyes, she pushed, feeling the page lift and fall, and then there was only darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

A Supernatural Ghost Story; Chapter 4;

Sam woke up to the smell of heavenly fresh coffee...and the sound of Dean's slightly off key whistling as he kicked the door closed behind him and sauntered into the room. How did he manage to make heavy metal sound reasonably decent as a whistle? Sam thought while he rolled over and debated about whether or not he actually had to get out of what had turned out to be a surprisingly cozy and comfortable bed…

"Up and at em Sammy!" Dean said, sitting down on the end of the bed heavily and then giving a bounce or two for good measure. "You're not going to sleep such a beautiful day away!"

"I take it you woke up on the right side of the bed this morning…who's bed was it again?" Sam mumbled, sitting up and reaching blindly for the coffee.

"Sandy I think…" Dean snatched the cup out of his reach and retreated to the other bed. "Hunt first, coffee later."

"If there's no coffee I won't have the energy to hunt at all," Sam moaned, rubbing his hands through his hair so that it stood out in all directions. "Some of us were up late last night working" he pointed out, standing up and heading in the general direction of the bathroom.

"Hey I was working!" Dean shouted after him as the door closed on the words.

"Well, and here I was even nice enough to get Sammy's double foam whatever the hell girly coffee…" Dean murmured to the empty room, setting the take-out cup on the bedside table and pulling the nearest book over to his bed. There was only one reason why Sam would be in such a mood first thing in the morning and that was that the research of the night before hadn't gone well, which generally meant that the day wasn't going to be any better either. The night before Sam had said that it was like looking for a needle in a pile of needles, well, he was right, but where they were looking it was more like a deadly-kill-you-bloody kind of needle in a pile of identical but harmless needles.

Dean felt another twinge of guilt as he idly flipped through the pages while he heard the shower start from behind the bathroom door. He told himself that he wasn't the researching type, that it was better if Sam did the brainy part cause he was better at the stab em and shoot em dead part, but it all rang sort of hollow. He was just as able as the next person, and here he was shifting it all off on Sammy.

Dean grabbed another book off the floor and started to read.

* * *

Sam leaned against the wall of the shower and felt the hot spray of the water soaking into his hair and flowing in rivulets down his face and neck. He let start to wash the fog of another night of too little sleep away and make him fresh for the day. He knew Dean meant well, but sometimes it all just got to Sam. The moving all the time, never having any ties to people or places, knowing that if you did it would only put them in danger. Dean and John were born to that kind of life, and even since realizing that he could never really escape it and sometimes didn't even want to, it was still something that Sam struggled with. It was the little things that brought it up again, like realizing that he and Dean wouldn't grow old and would die—probably soon—in some violent bloody hunt. Happened to all hunters sooner or later, but Sam…maybe it was silly, it certainly wasn't reality, but he still kind of hoped that someday they'd run out of things that went bump in the night to hunt and he'd be able to settle down into that quiet nine-to-five life…

The hot water turned cool as the crummy hotel water heater ran out of steam. Sam sighed, shaking his head and sending droplets of water spraying trying to clear out the day dreams. There was no such thing as happily ever after he told himself as he reached for the soap. Hunt evil, take as many with you as you can before you die bloody. That was his future, that was every hunter's future.

* * *

Dean looked up from the book as Sam stepped out of the bathroom, toweling at his hair and reaching for a shirt from the bag on the floor.

"hey did you read this?" he asked, eyes already skimming the page again.

"What?" Sam's voice emerged muffled from underneath the shirt as he pulled it over his head. "Hun?"

"This. Right here," Dean held out the book open to the beginning of the chapter; dark swirling figures filled the half page before the text began. "Soul stealers."

"Like Reapers?" Sam asked coming to sit on the bed beside his brother.

"No, Reapers are what guide the soul to the other world, or whatever comes next," Dean amended as he remembered his all too chilling experience with Tessa. It seemed like she didn't even know where the ride ended.

"Kind of like the ferryman, taking souls across the river."

Sam looked up in astonishment. "Since when are you up on the ancient Greek myths?" he asked confused.

"So I've been looking into some Greek history recently," Dean grumbled, evasively.

"Okaaay…" Sam said, still surprised but not wanting to push it. Dean had been oddly touchy ever since that job in Remington a few months back, and since Lucifer had risen there was something driving Dean harder then usual.

"If we can get back to the book?" Dean snarked, and Sam nodded raising his hands in a universal gesture for surrender.

"It says here that there are also things that can steal souls…"

Sam grabbed the book out of Dean's hand and flipped through a few pages. "Like how Indian cultures used to believe that camera and photographs stole people's souls?"

"Yeah, only it looks like that was just built around these things…and it's not that out there, after all, spirits haunt objects and are tied to bit and pieces of their bodies, who's to say that there isn't something out there that could take these souls too? Anyways a whole ton of different cultures believe that there's something that can steal peoples souls. There's tons of lore out there on ways to protect your soul," Dean turned a few more pages and Sam could see drawings of symbols and numbered lists fly by.

"Okay, but even if there are, why would someone want to have a whole bunch of souls? I mean it's not as if spirits can really do much…." Sam remembered how when he and Dean had been taking a spirit walk when they found a town that people weren't dying in, they'd barely been able to find the juice to make a swing creak in the breeze, let alone hurt anything.

"Maybe not right away," Dean said, following Sam's thoughts. "But after a little while a spirit can be a powerhouse. And if you get enough of them…all together, and bound, and angry…"

"You've got an army," Sam whispered, the conclusion sending chills down his spine. He and Dean had taken on their fair share of spirits and ghosts, but those were usually in ones and twos…a mass haunting, being directed by someone—or something—who was powerful enough to trap and control a group of spirits…that was not just your run of the mill haunting.

"So how many are we potentially dealing with?" Sam asked.

"Don't know," Dean said, rummaging through the newspaper clippings of headlines and obituaries on Sam's bed.

"It says that with soul stealers, it's not just about having some piece of the body…they do something before the person dies that takes their soul so they don't need any remains to keep their hold. So we can't discount people who've been cremated anymore either."

"Great," Sam sighed. This haystack was starting to look like a field of haystacks.

"So it's back to the beginning then. Do we even know how far back we've got to look?" Sam saw the dusty piles of archives in the town library stretching out in front of his eyes. "The last year? Decade? Century? How long has this thing been around?"

"Weeelll…" Dean stalled, trying to figure out if there was some way around bringing up the memories. He sighed, giving up; Sam needed to know what they were facing. "Book says that these things are under the control of Death…as in the horseman. He pulls off the reapers and lets these things loose to create his army. Like his very own personal rising of the witnesses."

"Fantastic, so only since…" Sam trailed off remembering the night that Death was raised…the night that his last real hope of actually being able to win against the devil died along with Jo and Ellen.

"Yeah, since." Dean said tossing the pages back down and walking out the door.

A/N: Remember reviews=love! Thanks all : )


	5. Chapter 5

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Ch. 5;

Sam looked up from the records when he heard the second muffled thump sound, repetitive and loud in the nearly empty basement of the library.

"Dean?" he whispered loudly, abandoning the computer station and moving stealthily around the corner. The noise persisted and Sam sped up, reaching into the back of his belt for the gun he was never without.

"Dean?"

"God Sam, why does research always involve dusty books and basements?" Dean groaned, looking up and Sam relaxed when he saw the red mark on his brothers forehead from where he'd been repeatedly banging it against the open book on the table. "And why do you get the computer stuff with easy search words while I get the papercuts?"

"If you know how to hack into the coroners database, be my guest," Sam said, slipping the gun back again and smiling at the other lone person in the basement; some grad student who'd taken up three of the desks with books and newspapers working on their thesis.

"Show off," Dean muttered, closing the book with a slam and earning a glare from the grad student.

Sam smiled again and shrugged apologetically as he hissed at Dean; "shhh…this is a library and you're going to get us kicked out."

"Well at least I'd be doing something then."

"We are doing something, I'm finding a list of what size of dead army we're potentially up against and you're supposed to be trying to find out how the hell to stop them."

"Kill death? Sure, give me the easy question."

Sam pulled up a chair and sat down on the opposite side of the table. Whatever good mood Dean had woken up in this morning had faded as the hours pent up in the basement of the local library passed.

"Do have any other bright suggestions?"

"Lunch?" Dean asked, looking hopeful for the first time since they'd left the hotel that morning.

Sam looked down at his watch and noticed that it was well past two, the morning had come and gone without him even noticing it. He glanced back at the computer, a little too longingly…he knew that he was too focused on this, nearly obsessed with it, but he couldn't seem to help it. He had to stop this, whatever the cost to himself.

But that didn't mean that he could forget about everyone else.

"Sorry," Sam said, giving Dean a watered down version of his puppy dog look. "Why didn't you say something?"

"You seemed to be in a groove or something….I didn't want to interrupt genius at work," Dean joked but only half heartedly.

Sam laughed—the grad student responding with a loud: "shhhh!", before he sobered and smiled at his ever-hungry brother.

"Let's go find you some pie."

"Save the pie, I'll settle for whatever's closest—I'm about to pass out from low blood sugar!" Dean said scrambling up and making a dash for the stairs.

Sam shook his head, remembered to pause by the computer on his way out and clear the history before running up the stairs two steps at a time to catch up to Dean.

* * *

Papers fluttered around the basement, lifting off the tops of tables and shelves and floating in an unfelt breeze in eddies around the room. One clipped the top of the blonde head of the grad student, bent studiously over his books once more. He looked up in surprise and then froze at the pages flying through the air, nearly missing him as they flew past.

One of the books on the table beside him fell to the floor with a thump, making him jump out of his chair and stare around wildly. Another book went sliding along the surface and skidded of the end to fall beside the first. He was breathing quickly now, flight or fight instinct raised his eyes blinked as he tried to figure out what was happening and locate whatever was making the books and papers move. The air was suddenly cold despite the space heaters in the basement, and he had horrible chills shivering up his spine: like something was lurking just out of sight or behind his back…

Between one blink and the next it was gone. Pages settled calmly to the ground, the menacing feeling disappearing as if it never was.

He rubbed his hands over his face and back through his hair, trying to get his breath and convince his heart and body that everything was normal. He'd been spending too much time on his own, researching solo for days on end lately. It wasn't healthy. People needed fresh air and sun…something about vitamin D…yeah, that had to be it. He just needed a break, away from all the work and pressure. It was messing with his mind.

He shook his head, moving a little faster than was reasonably excusable over to the stairs, glancing back once before nearly sprinting from the building.

* * *

They stood crowded in between the stacks in the basement, the light dim and dampened by the rows and rows of books filling the space along the walls with a center space open for long tables.

"Why can't we take them now?" one asked. He was new, impatient still and remembering life so fresh it was like a burning fire inside of him to act, to do something. They all remembered it, and so were tolerant…at least for now.

"Because we were told to wait." Someone answered.

"Why?" Impertinent. Youth often were, but this was going too far.

There was a chill in the air and frost formed on the insides of the glass, sucking what moisture there was in the air into ice and snow.

"Because we were told. There are plans for them." A lash of ice in the very words, chilling the souls of all present.

"Well…when then?" The voice was sufficiently more respectful now, almost reverent. They could give leeway to this: it wasn't as if any of them had a choice anymore, let them question while they still could.

"Soon. Very soon."


	6. Chapter 6

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 6:

Dean looked up from his pie, an expression of pure heaven on his face, eyes closed as he chewed with relish. "Mmmmm….good pie."

"I bet," Sam said, looking up from where he was playing with the remnants of his meal, using some soggy fries to make designs in the Ketchup smeared on the edge of the plate.

"Want some?" Dean asked, holding out the plate and fork to Sam. He didn't offer to share his pie with just anyone and it was a sign of how worried about his brother he really was that he'd go to such extreme measures to get Sam talking. Sam was pushing himself too hard. God knew he more than most wanted to kill the devil and find a way to keep hell on earth from being more than a creative phrase, but this was going too far. The sleepless nights, dead end hunts…and if it was possible to kill yourself with too much research, Sam was well on his way.

"It's apple," Dean said, waving the plate under Sam's nose.

He smirked, looking up from a partially drawn devils trap in the ketchup. "No thanks, I wouldn't dream of getting between you and true love," he carefully wiped the fries through the ketchup once more before popping them in his mouth.

"Their apple pie isn't that good," Dean said, confirming this by taking another large bite and grinning happily.

Sam shook his head, looking around for the waitress and catching her eye for another cup of coffee.

"That's what? Your fourth in nearly as many hours?" Dean asked quietly between bites.

"So?" A warning note entered Sam's voice.

"Isn't caffeine supposed to be bad for you or something?"

"I don't think it's going to kill me," Sam met Dean's eyes across the table, a hard truth in them making his grey eyes glint like metal. They were hunters. He could drink as much caffeine---or alcohol, as he wanted, hell he could smoke like a chimney and it still wasn't going to take years off his life that weren't already gone the moment he left Stanford and got into his father's car with Dean.

Dean swallowed and broke his gaze off of the hardness in his brothers' face, pushing the pie to the end of the table. He wasn't hungry anymore. "Doesn't mean you shouldn't care."

"Whatever," Sam mumbled under his breath and reached for the cup.

It must have been a trick of the light, some double image in his eyes or reflection from the glass window by the booth, but for a second he thought he saw another hand reaching parallel to his own. But it moved through the cup, not able to hold the handle the slender fingers looked like they pushed at it without making contact.

The cup tottered and fell, his own fingers barely brushing the warm side before dark coffee cascaded over the table top, sloshing onto the floor and barely missing his legs. He stared, something about how it angled away from him to spill into the aisle making him wonder…and those hands, he thought he remembered them…long fingers, the nails painted in chipped blue polish…

"Sorry honey," the waitress came rushing over, towel in her hands and began to soak up the dark liquid off the table. "Can I get you another cup?"

"The cheque will be fine thanks," Dean answered quickly, giving her his trademark smile as she walked away.

* * *

She watched as they stopped to pay at the cash before leaving the nearly empty restaurant. The door swinging wide as they left and letting in a gust of cold air and a few snowflakes that melted in the warmth coming from the kitchen. A lonely looking man at the counter shivered slightly and hunched deeper into his coat and the waitress refilled his coffee. She'd let him have leftovers at the end of the day if there were any, left them on the step out back and the kitchen door open for light against the dark and the cold. He liked meatloaf. It was a good day if he could get enough change for a cup of joe, and she'd let him sit longer than the others slowly drinking the warmth down…truly a kind soul in the world.

It was amazing how many things you could learn about a person if you had time to wait and watch quietly. Or if they didn't know you were there, couldn't see you watching even if you stood right in front of them. This wasn't the first time that the Winchester's had come to this particular diner; it was close to the hotel, close to the library. She took time to learn where they went, to watch and wait. No one ever saw her.

She looked down at her hand, still sitting in the booth where Sam had sat only minutes before. She could feel the heat of the hot coffee along the side of her hand, almost feel the sting and bubbling of blisters coming to the surface…it had been so long since she'd actually been able to _feel_ anything it was odd, strange to have even a slight sensation of physical matters—pain or pleasure. It was disturbing to realize how alien it seemed now, how far she must have drifted from life without even knowing it.

Maybe that was why she was starting to hear the whispers. They frightened her as nothing had in a very long while…since before she'd found the Winchester brothers in fact. She didn't remember much of anything from before…there was pain and fear and darkness, then some indeterminate amount of time after that she'd come out of the haze to see Sam. Maybe that's why she stayed with them—with him, over the years. One reason anyways.

The whispers in the library earlier…."…_can't we take them now?...Soon. Very soon_." They frightened her. The ice and cold in the words seem to twist their way inside her somehow and lodge beside her heart like a knife. The feeling like someone walking over her grave…if she had a grave that was.

Ever since she'd found the Winchesters, she hadn't been afraid for herself anymore, or afraid of what could get her in the dark. She'd only been afraid for them, and what would happen when the darkness they were hunting finally started hunting them.

* * *

A/N: Goodness! Sorry for the intense delay between updates! A month is pushing it (even for me) and I hope some of you are still hanging on to this story. Reviews are love and I'll try to be better about the updating—Jan. was academic hell this year with far too many applications and work going on. RL sucks out loud though so more fanfiction fantasy escaping for Feb it is! Thanks for sticking with me ~Xan


	7. Chapter 7

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 7;

"This town is starting to give me the willies Sammy," Dean suppressed a shiver, pulling up the collar on his jacket.

"What now?" Sam rolled his eyes and tipped his chair back from the table. They'd barely been back at the library for an hour when Dean had started up again. He knew that his brother wasn't exactly Mr. Research, but this was getting ridiculous.

"Do you know how many people are named Mortimer in this town? I mean, one or two sure, but six? Now that's just damn uncanny."

"Dean…"

"What? That doesn't sound weird to you?"

"Well, a little but…"

"Yeah?" Dean closed the cover on the book he was reading with a slam, sliding it across the table.

"well, just that it's not our kind of weird is all."

"Might be."

"Get back to the research Dean." Sam sat forward, rubbing his hands over eyes that felt gritty with sand from staring at the computer screen for too long. He'd managed to compile a list of nearly everyone who had died in this town since Death was risen but it wasn't getting them any closer to an answer about how to keep them dead.

Besides, and Sam hated to admit it, but ever since they'd come back from lunch he'd had trouble concentrating…they were the only ones here and yet it kept feeling like they were being watched. The feeling was starting to creep him out.

"Look," Sam said, sliding his chair back so he could peer around the corner of the large bookshelves. "How about we take a break from this and try and track down some of the names on this list."

"What are we supposed to do with a list of dead guys?" Dean asked, he was hopeful to ditch the research but didn't see anything much in the way of alternatives. They still had little to go on, and didn't even completely know what they were fighting against let alone how to stop it.

"Salt and burn them?" Sam suggested, shrugging.

"The book said that it wouldn't help, doesn't stop whatever hold these uglies have on the spirits."

"Well we haven't come up with anything else that would work, so I figure it can't hurt right? And books can't be right all the time?"

"Okay," Dean said, standing up and crossing his arms. "Who are you and what have you done with my geeky little brother?"

* * *

"Now this is more my style," Dean sighed in contentment as the fourth corpse of the night turned golden with bright flames. "No books, no musty basements, no "shhhhh"s, just some good old fashioned-"

"Vandalizing graves?"

"torching spooks." Dean finished. "Come on Sam, you can't tell me it doesn't feel good to actually be doing something."

"After 24 feet of digging, I think I could live with a little less doing." Sam wiped sweat off his forehead leaving behind a streak of dirt and grime in its place.

"Hey this was your idea after all," Dean pointed out, leaning against the edge of his shovel.

"I know I know…I guess I was just getting sick of being cooped up with the books. It can happen you know, even for me." Sam gave his brother a goofy grin, before turning away to look out over the tombstones. The moon was a small sliver of light in the sky, making the stars appear brighter even while it cast everything below into a deeper darkness. He'd thought that getting out, doing something physical—the repetitive push, scoop, lift, dump of the grave digging would shake the lingering feeling of eyes watching his every move, but it hadn't. Even here, he could still feel it, like burning holes in his back…suddenly being in a graveyard seemed like a much worse idea then it had a few hours ago in the brightly lit library.

"Okay, what's wrong?" Dean asked casually, moving around Sam to start shoveling the dirt back into the now empty grave.

"What makes you think that anything's wrong?" Sam quickly moved to help, shaking himself out of the late night reverie and trying to convince his body what his brain already knew: there was nothing out there watching him in the dark.

"Dude, you've got that brooding and moody look about you again."

'I am not brooding and moody."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Okay, well maybe it's the fact that we've been out here for hours, just the two of us, digging up four graves and you've barely said a word the whole time?"

Sam shuffled dirt from the pile into the hole, silently cursing.

"I don't want a whole chick-flick, sharing and caring moment here, but if something's up then I need to know that you're still with me on this, no matter what."

Sam threw his shovel down, the point sticking in the dirt mound so that the handle quivered with the force he'd used. "I'm not going anywhere Dean, how many times do I have to tell you that."

"So what's getting your tightie whities in a knot then?"

Sam sighed, leaning back against the nearest headstone. He closed his eyes, mouth opening once and then again before actually forming words, unsure of how to begin. It seemed so stupid…so childish, like he was telling his big brother that he was scared of the boogyman in the closet or something. "It's just I've got this feeling like something's watching us…watching me. Ever since we came into town and I can't seem to shake it."

"Do you feel it now?" Dean asked, suddenly alert and eyes scanning into the darkness around them even while he maintained a casual posture leaning against his shovel. He'd learned the hard way that his brothers '_feelings'_ weren't something that you just laughed about and ignored. They worried him though…Sam hadn't displayed much of anything in the way of freak powers since he'd been cut off the demon blood, and Dean couldn't' help but wonder what brought on this resurgence.

"Yeah. It comes and goes, but ever since the library I haven't been able to shake it. It's probably nothing…too little sleep, this case and death and everything…" Sam trailed off half heartedly. It was one thing for him to be creeped out by strange feelings, but when Dean started to take them seriously he couldn't keep convincing himself that they were just nothing anymore.

"Lets finish up here and get back to the car. The room's salted and devil trapped right?"

"Right," Sam confirmed. It was something that their dad had grilled into both boys, and something that had stuck with Sam even while at Stanford; the first thing they did in a new place was salt all the doorways and windows and draw down the intricate pattern of a devils trap in front of the door.

"Then we should be good there until morning, when we can figure all this out."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," said a voice out of the night, the sound sending ice shivering up Sam's spine.

* * *

Dean pulled the shovel out of the dirt, holding it over his shoulder like a baseball bat as he scanned the seemingly empty cemetery around them. There were too many dark shapes and shadows for something to hide in.

He heard Sam click the safety off his gun behind him and backed up a step to be closer to his brother.

"Get to the car Sammy," he whispered, still trying to pin down a location on where the voice was coming from.

"Stay where you are," someone moved in the darkness, coming closer from behind a line of shrubs. A flashlight snapped on, momentarily blindingly bright in the night, but Dean caught sight of something pinned to the dark stranger's jacket, and quickly motioned to Sam.

"What exactly seems to be the problem officer?" Dean smiled, letting the shovel hand easily over one shoulder and smiling brightly.

"Well, what would two boys like yourselves be doing out here in the middle of the night? With shovels?" the man stepped closer, still keeping the flashlight bright on them, but Dean noted with relief, not reaching for his gun.

"Trying to earn an honest living," Dean said, ignoring the way Sam coughed behind him and hoping that he'd been swift enough to catch Dean's signal and hide the gun.

"See we're Morty's new assistants, he's getting on in years and didn't want to work the night shift—but someone's got to get the graves ready for services tomorrow right?"

"Let me get this straight—you're saying that you're gravediggers?"

"Yup," Dean said, smiling for all he was worth.

"It's good money and we can pull a second shift after work," Sam put in, coming up to stand beside Dean, his hands held out from his sides. They looked at each other, Sam shrugging his shoulders ever so slightly while Dean raised his eyebrows, this wasn't exactly a great cover story but it was all they had to keep them out of jail for the night.

The light suddenly dropped, illuminating the still smoking grave, half empty bag of rock salt and lighter fluid at their feet.

Laughter filled the air as the man looked back and forth between the two of them, hands resting easily on his belt.

"Now if that isn't the most cock and bull story I've ever heard, but it is sweet of you boys to try—and that was some fast thinking Dean! Careful or you'll start getting a name for yourself as something more than just a pretty face."

And he stepped forward into the light and Dean saw that the darkness of the night was contained within the man's eyes.

"Who are you?" he hissed, moving between the demon and Sam, even while Sam pulled his gun free and leveled at the man.

"Ah, well now you ran off before we could be properly introduced last time."

"Death," Sam said, feeling as he did as if a cloud passed over the moon, leaving it cold and darker than a moment before in the graveyard.

"Among other names."

"What do you want with us?" Dean said, trying to keep the open pit between him and the horseman who was slowly circling around so that he could lean carelessly against the square stone at the front of the grave.

"With you?" he laughed again, standing up and watching easily as Sam tracked his movements easily, sighting over the end of his gun. "You'll find out soon enough. When the light is swallowed by darkness."

And the man suddenly reached down to his side, hand coming back up with a gun.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, pushing his way in front of his brother and causing them both to fall to the ground even as he pulled the trigger.

Sam looked up to see a round hole appear in the fabric of the man's shirt, a red stain moving outwards slowly…but he just smiled down at where the brothers lay in the dirt, hand with the gun moving steadily still, until it reached his own head and pressed the muzzle tight against his temple.

"I told you I didn't want you," he said and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Sam dropped the bag inside the door, kicked it closed and stumbled over to the bed. He collapsed face first onto the mattress, not caring about the dirt on his clothes or the mud stuck to his boots. He could hear the shower start from the bathroom and the sound of Dean's clothes hitting the wall before the curtain pulled closed and then it was just the muffled sound of water running.

They'd buried the sheriff in the open grave, waiting to be sure that he was completely burned before they left. It had taken their whole supply of lighter fluid and some gas siphoned off the impala but the man was nothing more than ash and dirt now. Sam added a stop at the hardware store to replenish their supplies to his list of things to do tomorrow. It was an ever growing list, but this at least, was something that he could fix. Finding a way to kill death and stop the soul stealers from killing anymore innocent people and growing their army, well, that was going to be a little trickier.

He groaned and rolled over, feeling the muscles of his shoulders and back protesting the long hours of digging. He should try and stay awake long enough to have a shower once Dean was through…there'd be little enough hot water left in the morning and it would do him good…but even as he thought it his eyes were falling closed.

He felt himself drifting off, the sound of water soothing and constant and Dean started to humm slightly off key from the bathroom, like he used to when Sam was younger. The last thing he remembered before the haze of sleep set in, was soft fingers stroking through his hair, a hand lingering on his cheek before it too was gone.

A/N: Reading week soon so more updates! But I just couldn't wait :) Let me know what you think~Xan


	8. Chapter 8

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 8;

Sunlight filtered in through the curtains, their fabric so old and worn that it barely held out any of the light. The room has been slowly growing brighter over the past three hours since the sun had risen fully above the horizon…and Dean had been sitting at the table, watching Sam sleep for most of those three hours.

He was worried about Sammy. Nothing new there, sometimes it felt as if he spent most of his life worrying about his little brother—and what was even more frustrating was that it never seemed to make any actual difference. Sam always seemed to get into even more trouble, and there never seemed to be anything that he could do to stop it. Damn, even going to hell hadn't stopped it…in some ways it probably made things worst.

He was "feeling" things again…whatever psychic powers Sam had inherited from the demon blood was acting up again and Dean had no idea why. Was Sam somehow dosing himself again? Didn't he know what that stuff did to him? Dean didn't want to believe it but he couldn't think of any other solution…he'd just have to watch over Sammy, like always, and hope that this time he did a better job at keeping his baby brother safe.

He didn't think he could survive watching Sammy detox again…

* * *

Sam slid out from behind the driver's side of the impala, trying his hardest to remember that Dean would kill him if he slammed the door, but that his brother's constant dogging him was making him want to do just that.

"Dean, there's no reason why we both need to be at the morgue—I can handle this."

"I know," Dean fidgeted uncomfortably, knowing how angry Sam was getting at him but refusing to back down. He glanced up checking the sun, it was nearly noon, the bright light making him squint. If Sam was going to start tripping off demon blood he wouldn't last that much longer. "I guess I just have a thing for dead people and formaldehyde."

Sam gave him a withering look and slamming the car door, walking into the shade of the coroners' building.

"Oh this is going to be fun," Dean sighed and jogged off after his brother.

"What's with you?" Dean asked casually, finally catching up. Damn saskquatch legs made Sam hard to keep up with sometimes.

"What's with me? What's with you Dean?" Sam stopped just outside the door, blocking it and refusing to move. "You've been sticking to me like a shadow all damn day and it's getting annoying! It's like I can't make a move without falling over you, are you going to be tying my shoe and loading my gun for me next? I'm surprised you even let me drive this morning!"

Dean looked away guiltily…he'd thought that handing over the keys might make the rest of his attempts at sticking close to Sam go over smoother. Turns out that was a total loss.

"See?" Sam said, jumping on the first hint of guilt in Dean's eyes. "I knew it! Now what the hell is going on?"

"Nothing…" Dean mumbled unconvincingly.

"Dean, we're in this together, you can't keep hiding things from me or we'll never make it—now are you with me or not?"

His own words shoved back at him, Dean shook his head—it was either answer or sound like a total dick head.

"Have any more of your _feelings_ lately?" he asked, trying to swallow the gruffness that emotion always put in his voice.

"Is that what this is about?" Sam asked, leaning back against the wall of the building in relief but it was tinged with betrayal. "You think I'm…drinking again?" he tried to chose his words carefully cause the street seemed even more populated than before.

"Well are you?" Dean crossed his arms, trying to ignore the hurt in his brother's voice. He needed to know before they could go any further on this hunt…already he was mentally calculating the miles to get back to Bobby's and the panic room.

"No Dean, I'm not. I know how important this is and we don't have time for either of us to screw around—but damn it, sometimes I wonder if I couldn't do more, if we couldn't actually have done things differently…when Jo and Ellen…if I'd only been stronger."

Dean was silent, biting down hard on the anger and pain that rose at the memory of that night.

"Don't you ever think that," he whispered. "Don't you ever think that what happened that night had anything to do with you not being strong enough. Nothing—nothing that you could have done was going to change what happened. We bet on the colt, and we lost….we lost a lot, but nothing that you did would have changed that."

"But Dean…" Sam said, tears coming to his eyes as he remembered how strong Jo had looked the last time he saw her, how determined Ellen was…how hot the flames had been from the blast.

"No Sam," Dean shook his head, refusing to go down that path or let his brother walk it either. "Nothing would have changed that—don't you even think it."

"Whether or not I think it doesn't seem to stop you from accusing me," Sam said, that familiar warmth of anger returning to smother the grief.

"What do you want me to think Sam?!" Dean said, trying to keep his voice down but only half succeeding. "You haven't been having _feelings_ like this since before you stopped guzzling down with Ruby!"

Sam flinched at the mention of her name, his muscles tensing but he stayed glued to the wall as if by will alone.

Dean took a deep breath, knowing that if he didn't calm the situation now, one or both of them was going to lose it. "But that's over now—you say it's over now, so it's over. Let's get on with this before we have to hug or something."

"Yeah…you go ahead Dean, I'm going to go check something out" Sam said, holding the door open.

"What?" Dean said, grabbing the edge of the weighted door to keep it from swinging shut when Sam let go. "I thought we were good now—you say you're sober then you're sober. Lets go."

"Yeah, I say it," Sam nodded, his lips thinning slightly at the irony as he walked away, "it would just be nice if you believed it."

"Where are you going?" Dean called after him as he cleared the last step.

"For a walk," Sam said, turning and tossing Dean the keys.

"Well you'll be back at the motel later, right Sam? Sam?" Dean called watching as his brother started to jog down the sidewalk and disappeared around the corner.

* * *

Sam ran, not caring where in particular but choosing the roads that looked less used…the road less traveled as it were. Slowly the downtown streets gave way to clustered houses and apartments, then spaced out structures with long manicured lawns, and finally only farmhouses littering the countryside. It really didn't take as long as he thought it might; but then the town was small and even if he wasn't on the track team anymore (and hadn't been for awhile) he was still in good shape.

He just needed the open space, some room to think without Dean, or angels or demons looking over his shoulder…It was something different about him now. He could remember a time when he was the happiest in the world just sitting inside, some seminar book open in his lap while he listened to the sounds of Jess moving around the house. Once upon a time he'd wanted nothing more then to never be alone again, to have someone to spend the rest of his life with and devote his time to making her happy.

Now he needed the empty spaces, the silence and the solace that being alone gave him. Sometimes he'd just leave the hotel in the middle of the night, leave Dean sleeping alone in the bed beside—or more often than not n someone else's bed, and go for a walk in the night. Gave him time to think.

Sometimes he thought that it was pulling him farther and farther away from everything that was normal…everything that was human. Dean was the only thing that tied him, like an anchor to the world—the only thing that kept him fighting every day. As long as Dean didn't give up, didn't give in then neither could he.

"How could he think that I would do that?" Sam made his way to the end of a dead end dirt road that branched off the main street he'd been following so far. At the end there was a fallen tree, large splinters sticking up in the air from where gravity had won out and it had toppled over. He moved to sit at the far end, watching how the light seemed to make patterns in the duty air as it filtered down through the leaves of the as-of-yet still standing trees.

"I screwed up so badly the last time…that damn stuff and Ruby poisoned me until I couldn't think straight and all I could think about was getting to Lilith, killing her and ending it once and for all…" he trailed off, leaning back and stretching out his legs against the nearest branch of the tree.

"But that's not it. Not really." And what was the use of talking to yourself if you weren't going to tell the truth? He asked silently, taking a deep breath and then continuing. "That anger, that pain—the driving need to make someone else hurt like that, like I did…the desire to just destroy something…it was always there. Ruby just nurtured it. Just gave it something to feed on and something to turn against…but it was already there…"

Sam closed his eyes, trying to remember the feeling of peace that sitting here gave him. No one was judging him or telling him what to do…it was the only thing that made him able to finally voice what he had always been afraid to say before;

"What if there's nothing that I can do about it? What if there's just something about me that's evil? …what if I'm destined to be Lucifer's vessel and there's nothing that I can do about it?"

Sam sat there for a long time, as the shadows lengthened and the sky slowly turned into a dusty rose before he got up and started to make his way back into town. Dean would be worried, but then, Dean always worried…what was new was that now Sam was worrying too.

Maybe it was stupid, and he had been initially bothered by the possible implications on his sanity, but talking out loud seemed to help him stay more connected…and surely, he thought, surely it wasn't too delusional to imagine that someone might be listening—Jess, maybe his dad…it wasn't too much to dream that they were somewhere better and might still care about him just a little right?

* * *

She waited on the fallen tree for a long time, long after Sam Winchester had walked away and the colours of the day had faded into darkness and shades of grey. Mist slowly came up and wrapped the world in another layer of grey—so much of it here now.

She couldn't feel the cold but she ached with the pain she'd heard in Sam's voice, had seen in his eyes. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and offer him peace from the demons that were haunting him, even just for a moment…but she was mist and gray, as insubstantial as air. And so all she could do was sit and listen when he spoke to her, and pray, and ache with a pain deeper than any cold.

* * *

Sam opened the door to the motel, his legs aching with fatigue from the run but an apology already on his lips even as he flicked on the light by the door.

"Dean, I'm sorry I just took off, I just needed…" he trailed off as Dean came in from the bathroom and he took in the bruises on Dean's jaw, the blood that had splattered onto his t-shirt. "Are you okay? What happened?!"

"Well I know what Death is doing with the all the fleshy left-overs of those Souls he's collecting, Sammy." Dean said tossing him a silver stick, sharpened into a point on one end. "Zombies."

* * *

A/N: well it's a little late, but hopefully worth the wait! Jared's nuptials got me a little down and out and not in the writing kind of mood, but I'm over it now—best to the happy couple and all that. and then wouldn't let me upload for like days!? wtf? odd, but better now too! :)

Reviews=love! ~Xan


	9. Chapter 9

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 9:

"Dean will you just stop a second and think?" Sam reached out and grabbed Dean's arm as he pulled the shovel from the trunk and went to move around the car.

"I don't need to think Sammy, I was just attacked in the middle of the day in a government building by zombies. The coroner is dead and I barely got out in one piece—now I want to burn me some soon-to-be zombie bones before I have a deja-vu moment."

"Dean, we're talking about close to 30 bodies, at least…and you want to dig up all those graves, salt, burn and then refill them? All before either someone notices and arrests us or Death comes around with more zombies?"

"23"

"What?"

"23 stiffs, I counted. The rest were cremated."

"Oh well 23 is completely reasonable!"

"Sam," Dean sighed, trying to think of a way to put what had happened in that basement morgue into words…"They started coming out the drawers…clawing their way out. We tried to barricade them in at first but we forgot about the one on the table. He got us first, and that was good because after him they were much less…intact. They're bodies had been autopsied…I thought the doctor was going to faint—and it might have been better if he had. We had to hack them apart cause they just kept coming…but there were just too many…the doc didn't make it."

"Dean…"

"I know what you're thinking Sammy, it's a stupid plan and we'll never be able to get to all the graves before someone catches on to us…but I don't know what else to do. We've been in this town for days now and we barely know anything more than we did the moment we rolled in. There are soul stealers out there creating an army—great, but we have no idea how to stop them. Big daddy reaper is involved but we don't know how to stop him either. At least this way we can keep anyone else from getting pulled apart like happened to the doc."

"We can keep looking…" Sam said weakly, knowing that they were running out of leads even on the research.

"While people die, screaming and fighting as if they landed in some horror movie?"

Sam looked away, imagining what the last moments of the coroner must have been like…it was bad enough for him and Dean to deal with some of the things that they hunted, but for normal people who didn't even know that there were things lurking out in the dark to be confronted with that in their last moments.

"Give me a shovel," Sam said as he slammed the trunk closed.

* * *

Sam leaned on the headstone, taking a short break to catch his breath before he moved back to the hole in front of him. He saw the flare of light as Dean torched the body behind him, in the grave that they'd just finished digging…he couldn't remember how many that made, but his whole body ached from head to toe.

"Who's next on the list?" Dean asked walking over and picking up Sam's shovel. He jumped into the shallow hole that Sam had made—barely two feet deep and started in, the dirt steadily being shifted from the hole onto the pile beside Sam with every motion Dean made.

"ummm…" Sam fumbled around for his half of the list, a torn—and now, dirt smudged—page torn out of their father's journal that Sam had been keeping a list of everyone who'd died in the past month on. He squinted in the dark for a moment before cursing, "Dean I can't read this, where's the damn flashlight?"

"In the bag with the lighter fluid," Dean grunted, shoveling yet another armload of dirt out the hole and trying to focus on keeping going. His arms and shoulders burned from the exertion and he could barely lift the shovel, but he kept thinking; just one more, and then one more after that…and again. He heard Sam shuffle away and took a moment to lean in exhaustion against the shovel, craning his head back and hearing his neck crack while he noted the slight lightening of the sky above. It was nearly dawn…they'd have to stop soon. But not until they finished this last one. They'd managed 12 tonight so far, more then he'd expected but not nearly enough.

He picked up the shovel, took a deep breath and plunged it into the hard packed soil again…just this last one he thought. Turning to dump the dirt at the edge of the grave, he felt a hand close over his ankle with bone crushing strength and pull him down, the shovel falling harmlessly beside the pile of grave dirt.

* * *

Sam turned back at the sound of his brother swearing, his heart stuttering as he took in the sight of Dean's shovel lying on the ground but him no where in sight.

"Dean!" Sam called, dropping the flashlight and sprinting the meters between him and the open grave. He knew they'd been too lucky so far—Death wasn't just about to lie down and forget about them.

He skidded to a stop at the edge of the grave, looking down three feet to see Dean struggling with something that was holding his feet down."

"Sammy," Dean grunted as his brother appeared out of the gloom above him. "little help here?"

Sam pulled his gun out from his waistband, glad for once that he'd taken the time to load it with silver bullets that might at least hurt this dead son of a bitch. "I can't get a clean shot," he growled with frustrating, jumping down into the hole.

"Take it anyways," Dean ordered, his jaw set while he gave Sam a look so determined it reminded him for a moment of their father.

"Dean, I'd shoot your foot…" Sam said, lowering the gun that he'd automatically raised at his brothers command.

"This damn thing is taking it off anyways," Dean swore as another hand reached up to take hold above his knee, fingers ripping through jeans and into his skin beneath.

"Shit," Sam abandoned the gun, reaching behind him and fumbling for the shovel he broke the handle off, holding the metal blade in his hands. "Can you move at all?"

"Not much," Dean strained and pulled his leg about an inch off the floor of the grave. The dead thing immediately retaliated, digging fingers deep into his flesh like blades and twisting until blood ran out in a steady trail.

"A little's all we need," Sam said, dropping to his knees and wedging the shovel head in between his brother's leg and the earth. "Ready?"

"Go for it," Dean said, using his hands to get as much leverage as he could on his leg.

Sam didn't hesitate, thinking of how Dean had said they'd needed to dismember the damn things in the morgue earlier that night, he pushed the shovel as hard as he could and felt it slice through flesh and glance off bone. The hand hung nearly useless, attached only by a few fibers of sinew and decaying tendon it flapped against the dirt.

"Hurry up Sammy, this thing wants to take a piece of me with it!" Dean said, and Sam quickly repositioned himself to cut the other hand away from Dean's leg.

"Watch where you're aiming that thing," Dean cautioned, trying to find a smile through the pain. "I plan on being a family man one day."

"Yeah right," Sam said, steadying himself before slicing through the second hand.

Dean scrambled back as soon as its grip slackened, and Sam turned to see why—the rest of the body was pushing its way up to the surface, forearms batting at the air even while the hands flopped useless from bloody wrists. It's head broke the surface and Sam nearly gagged with the smell of rot that filled the air.

"Let's get out of here," he suggested, moving to help Dean up and giving him a boost out of the shallow grave.

"We can't just leave it Sammy," Dean said, hissing in pain as he tried to stand on the ankle that the zombie had gotten ahold of. He hoped it wasn't broken, but there wasn't much he could do about it either way now. "Get the lighter fluid from the bag, and the gas can while you're at it."

"While you what? Throw dirt at it?"

Dean reached down, picking up something shining from the ground. "While I keep it busy—dead things really need to learn to stay dead" he said, cocking Sam's discarded gun and waiting while it slowly hauled it's upper body free from the dirt.

* * *

Sam sprinted for the last grave, the fire Dean had set only minutes before still smoldering and casting long shadows over the nearby graves. He skidded to a stop a few feet away, already bending to grab the lighter fluid containers when he noticed the light change behind him. He turned, his body continuing with the motion of dumping out the bag and fumbling for the lighter before he automatically scrambled back and away, hands reaching for the gun in his belt only to find it empty—and be reminded a moment later when Dean started shooting.

The body from the grave they'd just torched was climbing out and awkwardly stumbling towards him. Still on fire, it lurched to grab him even while the flames continued to consume it and bits of burning flesh dropped on the ground around Sam.


	10. Chapter 10

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 10;

Sam looked around for anything he could use as a weapon, but other than the lighter fluid he still clutched—and since it was already burning, he only risked himself by feeding that fire—there was nothing nearby.

"Sam!" Dean yelled as the sound of gunshots behind him suddenly stopped. "I could use that fire anytime now!"

"Well I've got a little more of it then I can handle, so give me a second," Sam yelled back breathlessly, as he dodged another flaming limb that tried to close over him, rolling to the side and trying to get enough space to get to his feet.

"Son of a bitch," Dean swore, taking a step towards Sam and nearly falling with the pain in his ankle. He wasn't going to be able to do much…but maybe he could give Sam a running start.

"Hey ugly," he yelled, timing it while the thing turned and throwing the only thing he had to hand—Sam's gun, straight at the flaming dead thing. It hit it dead on, knocking the thing back a step but barely phasing it, it was less than a heartbeat before it was moving towards Sam again.

But those few seconds were enough, Sam had rolled to his feet and glanced back at Dean once while the thing moved closer. They'd been doing this for long enough it took only a look between them to know that they were each thinking the same thing. Sam looked away again, trusting that Dean would be able to get out of the way on his own.

"You want me?" he taunted, "Come and get me," then he turned and started running back towards where his brother waited.

Dean limped a few steps away, knowing that the plan would only work if he was far enough away that the thing wouldn't change its mind and turn on him instead. They only had one shot at this, and he was counting on the fact that these zombies were stupider than most…hopefully Death hadn't had time to get them fully ready for whatever he had planned and Sam and Dean had surprised the horseman enough to send the things after them before they were ready.

Sam slowed down a few meters from where Dean had stood, he needed the zombie to be right behind him, and he took the opportunity to glance and look for Dean. His brother had managed to move a few feet away, around the grave and Sam smiled, tossing him the lighter fluid he'd managed to carry with him.

Dean nodded as he caught it, uncapping the bottle and waiting for Sam.

Sam felt the heat behind him from the flaming dead thing increase and started to run again. It kept up with him this time, somehow knowing that it was close even though its eyes had burst long ago from the fire.

Come on, Sam thought, just a little closer…he could smell the crisp smoky scent of burned flesh, and then something grabbed a hold of his shirt in the back and he swore with the pain as his skin burnt before he managed to pull away. He stumbled though and as he jumped nearly didn't make it, his legs falling into the open grave and the other zombie rising inside it latched onto his foot. He felt himself slipping, and then Dean was there, pulling him forward and swatting at the tongues of flame that were spreading on his shirt from where the thing had gotten a hand hold and set the fabric on fire.

Sam twisted in his brothers arms, turning back to see the zombie's arms waive, flaming in the air before it fell into the open grave where it's fellow waited. Dean ran his hand once more over Sam's back to be sure that the flames were out before hobbling the few steps back to the grave.

"Get toasted ass hole" Dean said, squeezing in the full container of lighter fluid onto the corpses and watching while the flames leapt up in the night.

* * *

"Just like that campfire we had in Kentucky, remember Sam?" Dean asked, as his brother came over and leaned down to help Dean limp back to the car.

"The werewolf hunt? You know most people just roast marshmallows…" Sam said, ignoring how his back protested the angle and weight of Dean leaning on him.

"But you can't hunt and kill marshmallows first."

"No, you can't… but then they're not about to try to kill you either."

"Picky picky, we made it out fine, just like now."

"Umm…. I wouldn't be so sure about that one," Sam paused as the car came into sight and Dean stilled under his shoulder, hand checking for his gun and then remembering that he'd tossed it in the dark.

"Damn."

There were four disturbed graves between them and car, and human-like shapes limbered towards them in the dark.

"Any ideas?" Sam asked, quietly, looking from one of those things to the other as they moved and cut off any route to the car.

"I'm thinking…" Dean mumbled, racking his brain—they were out of lighter fluid, not that that would have really helped much, he wasn't keen on fighting another of these things while it was on fire! Shovels were either broken or too far behind them and they didn't have a gun.

"Knives?" Dean suggested, his hand creeping into his pocket and closing over the comforting feel of the knife handle.

"Against these things? This many?"

"You got anything else?"

"Nope."

"then a good old fashioned knife fight it is," Dean said moving out from under Sam's shoulder and forcing himself to stand loosely while trying not to favour one ankle too noticeably.

Sam flipped open his own blade and watched as Dean stepped away from him, still limping and blood was covering his one leg from where the undead had managed to get its nails in. There was no way that they could make a run for it, so stand and fight it was. Sam took a breath and stepped slightly in front of his brother—he wasn't about to let Dean take the brunt of this fight when he was injured, and if they lived through it and he got bitched at for it later, well, then he'd thank his lucky stars for it then.

Suddenly both brothers tensed as laughter erupted from somewhere behind them, and clapping sounded loud in the night. Dean pivoted on his good foot, trying to see where it came from even while Sam moved up to stand behind him and guard his back. It wasn't necessary though, since the walking-dead stopped walking at the first sound of the man's voice.

"Well aren't you two just adorable," it said, and Dean discerned a darker shadow move against the lightening sky. "Here I thought you'd be good little boys and wait for the show to start, but you showed up and surprised us."

"You know us, always ready for a party," Dean offered still trying to see through the shadows that seemed to thicken around the figure at the edge of the graveyard behind them.

"I hope you like this one," it said, humour in the tone but not the voice as the figure motioned and the zombies started walking towards them again. "It's going to be your last."

"Why are you doing this?" Sam asked, nudging Dean back a step and then another as the things kept moving. If he could buy time maybe they could think of a plan to get out of here. "What do you want with all those souls for?"

"Ah, nice try boy, but I'm afraid it's too early to give away the big ending now…and it will be an ending that's for sure. My brothers and I have been waiting for centuries to be free again, able to ride under the stars and have dominion over the earth—I want to take full advantage of it."

"So what's this then?" Dean asked, touching Sam lightly and signaling him to stop—they were getting into tight rows of headstones that would hinder their movement when it came down to hand to hand fighting. "Just a fun Saturday night for you then?"

"Fun? Yes, but it's more than that. You came after my brothers…you dared to hunt the horsemen. This, this is payback."

"Oh, so we screw up your plans for the apocalypse and you're here to kill us, is that it?" Dean asked, getting annoyed with the whole thing. Too much talking and too little bleeding was happening so far.

The figure laughed again, "Oh Dean, how little you understand of this game we're playing. I'm not about to kill Sam, we've got plans for him. You, you I can kill," and the nearest zombie jumped knocking them apart while another stalked closer to Dean not the least bit dissuaded by the four inch knife he clutched before him.

* * *

A/N: 2 chapters in the same day! and one uploaded less than a week ago too! Wow I'm on a writing role lately :) This might have to do you until after the weekend...stupid competition's keeping me out of town and away from my computer :( Hope you enjoy and as always I love comments! live for and adore them! 3 ~Xan


	11. Chapter 11

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 11;

The undead thing lurched closer to Dean, coming at him in a straight line and Dean said a short prayer of thanks that these things seemed incredibly stupid. If it had tried to circle around him he'd have been screwed with his ankle making it nearly impossible to turn effectively, it would have easily gotten behind him in a matter of moments. As it was there was a slight chance that he could keep it occupied long enough before it killed him for Sammy to get away.

He wasn't deluding himself, he couldn't run, could barely move a step without intense pain, and only had a short blade to defend himself with. They weren't going to hurt Sam so the best thing he could do was try to take as many with him as he could and hope that Sam was fast enough to out run the rest.

"Come on fuglies," he whispered as it got within two feet and he struck out with the knife, slashing a deep gouge across its neck and stabbing deep into the main artery in the shoulder before diving in between it and the other one and rolling a few feet away.

It barely seemed to slow it down however, although its one arm now flapped ineffectually—Dean must have managed to cut some tendons with that stab. The second one he'd dodged started turning towards him and Dean scrambled backwards, trying to get to his feet only to feel hands like a vise close over his neck.

He'd missed the third zombie moving in the dark to get behind him and now it held him tight, hands closing to cut off his air and coming close to breaking his neck.

Dean twisted as much as he was able to see Sam take down the last one—its head was hanging at an awkward angle from where Sam had kicked it and as he slashed at it again it toppled backward over a headstone.

As soon as he got a moment to breathe, Sam immediately turned to look for his brother, seeing him kneeling on the ground with the zombie holding him by the throat and twisting his head back. Sam started to move forward but froze when the thing wrenched on Dean's head and his brother groaned softly.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy…" the figure said, coming closer and shaking its head. A short grey haired old man stepped into view, slightly hunched he shuffled slowly, his joints creaking with arthritis. He looked like a typical grandfather, right down to the knitted sweater, but there was something about him that made Sam's stomach churn.

"So what poor bastard are you possessing this time?" he asked, trying to inch his way closer to Dean.

"I'm hurt Sammy, this is the real me, the whole deal—Death personified. We're getting close to when I ride, I don't need vessels and possession anymore."

"And when is that?" the more information he could get the better, and the longer he could keep Death talking the longer Dean had.

"tsk tsk—you should already know the answer to that if you think about it," he stopped and looking Sam in the eyes, lifted one hand and the zombie pulled Dean's head back until his neck creaked and he moaned.

"Stop it!" Sam yelled, tears biting at the edges of his eyes as he fought against the urge to run to Dean, knowing that if he moved Death would kill him before he could get there.

"You can stop it Sam," the old man said, one hand poised in the air in front of him. "You can stop this right now—save Dean, stop these lovely creatures of mine from hurting anyone else…and all you have to do is say yes."

Sam froze, the breath stilling in his lungs as he realized that it would always come down to this. He could never escape this choice no matter how long he fought or how far or fast he ran. Somehow they'd always end up here…Dean's life hanging in the balance and Sam facing this choice.

And really it wasn't a choice—not when it was his brother's life, his brother who practically raised him from a baby, loved him and looked out for him every day of his life, his brother who had gone to hell for him and saved his life time and time again.

Sam looked down at where his brother knelt, meeting his eyes and seeing the rage and despair in them even while tears clouded his own.

"Sammy…no…" Dean choked out with the last of his air as if he could hear what Sam was thinking, could read it in his eyes.

Sam took a breath, and tore his gaze away from his brother, knowing that it would probably be the last time that he saw him and opened his mouth to agree—but Death wasn't watching him anymore. The old man's eyes were riveted on something behind Sam and there was a nervousness, an uncertainty in his posture now.

"Who are you?" he whispered, and Sam turned around to see what new element had joined them, but there was nothing there. The graveyard was as empty as it had been moments before, only the 7 of them—Death, his four undead zombies and the two brothers waiting in the grey dawn.

But Sam heard a whisper of sound as if from far away or through thick fog: "Someone who you can't hurt." There was a shift in the wind, and Sam thought it saw someone standing in the gloom—a grey outline of a girl in the mist. "Leave the Winchesters alone," she said and then the mist turned to fire.

* * *

Sam's cry had woken her from whatever mist clouded daze she so frequently slipped into and she'd come to the graveyard, taking in the scene in moments: Dean kneeling on the cold ground bleeding while something evil and undead gripped his throat so tightly he was turning blue, Sam standing a few feet away but parallelized with the threat to Dean, his heart in his eyes as he looked at his brother.

And then she'd heard it speak…she could see the outline of an old man like a fuzzy and faded photograph, but there was something darker lurking inside that figure that send a shiver through her. It has eyes in the head of swirling darkness that burned with a fire the colour of blood. And its voice…it was clearer than anything else she could ever remember hearing and seemed to reach inside of her and resonate like striking a tuning fork on metal.

"Who are you?" it whispered menacingly, eyes trying to burn holes into her through the dark.

"someone who you can't hurt," she answered, briefly surprised that whatever this was it seemed to be able to see her. It didn't matter what it was though, it only mattered that it was whatever was causing the heartbreak to overflow Sam's eyes.

She looked around once more and took in the other undead lurking around the brothers. They were indistinct too, their forms blurred, but what stood out clearly was a burning brand on their foreheads the same as the old man's eyes burned. She recognized it, from where she couldn't remember, but it was familiar and so she focused on that—drawing on whatever strength was left to her, for Sammy who wouldn't live through tonight if she couldn't send these things away.

She'd seen it in his eyes as clearly as Dean had. He was going to say yes, he would do nearly anything to save his brother—they were each other's only weakness. And if he said yes, then he'd be lost from her.

"Leave the Winchesters alone," she warned, reaching for the brands and forcing the energy to flow through her and consume their evil burning.

* * *

Sam watched in astonishment as the zombie's seemed to be incased in flame for a moment, burning so bright and yet somehow also so darkly that he could barely look at them.

The thump of bodies hitting the ground made him open his eyes and he looked around, barely believing what he saw until Dean moaned and he quickly moved to his brothers' side. The old man or Death had vanished, the zombies lying dead—completely dead grey lumps like the tombstones as the sun rose in the distance.

"What happened?" Dean whispered, his throat so swollen and hoarse he could barely force words out.

"I don't know…" Sam said looking around, "they just dropped dead."

"Death?"

"Gone, for now at least…" Sam trailed off, not sure about telling Dean about the voice he'd heard. Dean didn't seem to be in the best mood for confiding in at the moment, it was only early that same day that he'd accused Sam of drinking demon blood again after all—what would he think of Sam said he was hearing voices now? Especially if the horseman was hearing it too…

"Lets get out of hear," Sam suggested and Dean grunted in agreement and then in pain as Sam pulled him to his feet and they made their way towards the car.

* * *

"Are you sure you won't go to the hospital Dean?" Sam asked as he pulled the impala into the motel parking lot and went to shut off the engine. Dean's throat was still so swollen that he could barely speak and his leg was soaked in blood.

"be fine…" Dean managed, taking another swig of whiskey before twisting the cap back on and getting out of the car.

Sam rolled his eyes but knew better than to argue by now, he hoped that Dean would at least consent to some ice in addition to the alcohol. He grabbed the first aid kit out of the backseat and tossed it in the top of his bag before moving to follow Dean into the hotel room—he'd need stitches at the very least.

He shut the door behind him, turning the lock and pausing to salt the doorway before moving over to where Dean lay on the bed. He was stretched out, the bottle of whiskey held against his forehead, injured leg held out stiffly on the bed.

"Come on," Sam said, nudging Dean's uninjured foot with his own. "If you're not going to go to a hospital then the least you can do is sit up so I can get you fixed up." He knelt down on the floor in front of his brother, laying out the gauze and tape and needles onto a clean towel beside the bed.

Dean grunted and levered himself to a sitting position, ready to make a joke about Sam stitching like a girl when he froze in place, his hand coming down hard on Sam's shoulder in warning and making his brother pause as well.

"Sam," he warned, hand reaching behind him for where he'd left a gun under his pillow as Sam turned and followed Dean's gaze to the corner of the room near the bathroom door.

A girl stood there, she looked pale and exhausted but relieved too. Long dark hair framed a narrow face with enormous gray eyes that looked larger because of the dark shadows that surrounded them. She slumped down to the floor, leaning against the wall and reached out to brush a strand of hair away from her face, slender fingers the nails covered in chipped blue polish got half way there before falling limply back to the floor. It was the oddest thing, but she looked familiar to Sam…as if he should know her from somewhere.

He wasn't aware that he'd moved until Dean's hand tightened on his shoulder and he realized that he'd leaned closer to her.

"Who the hell are you?" Dean asked, "And how did you get in here?"

She looked up startled at the question, and glanced around her eyes narrowed suspiciously for intruders.

Sam leaned forward, ignoring Dean's hand still clutching at his shoulder so he was closer to the girl, "Are you alright?" he asked and watch while her eyes widened in confusion and surprise.

"You can see me?" she gasped quietly, and then fainted, her form shimmering into mist and air.


	12. Chapter 12

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 12;

"What the hell was that?" Dean cursed, sitting forward on the edge of the bed, his hand still holding tightly to the grip of the gun he'd retrieved from under his pillow.

"A girl?" Sam said, stating the obvious as if that would help his confusion, or help him remember why she looked so familiar…

"What the invisible woman?" Dean stood up and carefully approached the spot just to the left of the bathroom door where she'd disappeared. There wasn't even so much as a stain on the floor to mark her location but Dean found it unerringly. His fingers skimmed lightly over the carpet. "No sulfur."

"A ghost maybe?" Sam asked, finding his feet and standing up.

"Did you salt the door?"

"Of course," Sam replied, pointing to the intact salt line that they'd stepped over on their way in.

"lines broken around the windows?" Dean asked, already turning to look behind him and into the bathroom: the single small window, barely enough to let the steam out and provide a small amount of ventilation into the closet of a room was still thick with salt on the ledge.

Sam shook his head when Dean turned back to look at him, a question in his eyes. "It's fine too" he said, fingers smoothing the fine grains of sand along the front window.

"So we should be ghost-proof," Dean said, limping back to the bed and sitting down. "maybe there's a curse bag, some sort of hoodoo hex magic that would let a ghost enter?"

"Hoodoo Dean? In the middle of small town nowhere?"

"Maybe," Dean said, still looking around the room with suspicion.

"What do you want to do, search the room? Burn the place? It won't help…besides, I don't' think that she means us any harm."

"She's a ghost Sam, all they do is harm. Or have you forgotten all the haunts we've had to work and spirits that just wont' stay dead?"

Sam sighed in exasperation at his brother's pig-headed-ness. "Dean, did it look like she was going to hurt us? Did I miss the part where we were sent flying across the room by her angry spirit mojo? She looked exhausted, hurt and surprised."

Dean leaned forward, one hand unconsciously moving to hold onto his leg where the cuts from the zombie still ached and burned. "It could be a trick Sam, we're dealing with Death here—not some small time reaper but the big horseman himself. I wouldn't put it past him to use a spirit to trap us however he can."

"I just don't think that's it. She doesn't seem dangerous," Sam fumbled, trying to find the right words. "She seemed…"

"Yeah, exhausted, hurt, surprised," Dean mimicked, sticking out his lower lip and giving an impression of Sam's 'trust-me' puppy dog face.

"No, well I mean yes, but…"

"But?" Dean asked, the mockery slipping from his feature and voice as quickly as it had come. There was something else in Sam's voice that Dean hadn't heard before; a hesitancy, fear even.

"She seemed familiar Dean."

"Familiar?" Dean echoed, not sure if he'd heard right.

"Yeah, like I've seen her before somewhere."

"Well that's probable," Dean said, trying to take a deep breath and calm his stuttering heartbeat. There was a logical solution here, it didn't have to be some freaky demon-blood thing. "You've been searching through the medical examiner reports for this town, you probably ran across her picture in the autopsies photos or something."

Sam took a deep breath, looking down at his hands where he was slowly turning the metal first aide kit round and round in his long fingers.

"Dean I remember seeing her before we came to Hawks Ridge. When I think about it, I've been seeing glimpses of her for a while now."

* * *

Sam sat dejectedly on the bed while Dean threw things into bags and scowled generally at the whole world at large.

"Dean we can't just up and leave—what about Death? What about those zombies? You want to leave all these people here to deal with that on their own—how long do you think they'd last? I'll bet you a dollar it's less than a week without us."

Dean cursed and tossed a knife so hard at the table that it stuck an inch deep into the wood. "Damn it Sammy, what do you expect me to do? Here you say that you think you've been _seeing_ this ghost for awhile, and you expect me to just say what; oh well that's okay, I'm sure it'll be fine, let's just carry on with the hunt?" Dean forced a dramatic fake cheer into his voice, sarcasm dripping off every syllable.

"I expect you to be the brother I've known for my whole life—the brother who'd always put someone else's safety and well being ahead of his own."

"That's what I'm trying to do damn it! And the sooner we get to Bobby's the sooner he can figure this whole thing out and get rid of it—an exorcism or séance or something."

Sam sat quietly for a moment, watching as Dean pulled out a chair and started half heartedly fiddling with the knife stuck into the table—twisting it to the left, then to the right and slowly widening the whole in the wood.

"There's a whole town out there of someone elses Dean."

"I won't choose a stranger over my own brother, I can't believe you'd even ask that of me" Dean said, looking up from the knife to meet Sam's eyes—something hard and unbending in his stare. He'd gone to hell for his baby brother, had died to protect him time and time again, and sometimes Sam was the only thing that kept him from shouting yes to the angels at the top of his lungs.

"I'm asking you to believe that I can take care of myself Dean. I know that she, whoever, whatever she is, isn't here to hurt us. Please, just trust me about that much and look after someone else for a change." Sam turned his best puppy-dog look on his brother, the one that worked every time and tried not to smirk in relief when he saw Dean pull the knife out of the table in one swift move and thump it down on its side, the handle striking hard against the oak. His brother was giving in, and they were staying.

"So how long have you been seeing this ghost anyways?" Dean asked, mentally cursing himself out for falling for Sam's puppy-dog look again.

"I don't know exactly," Sam confessed, sliding forward to the edge of the bed and then trying not to slide off as the squishy mattress flattened under him. "It's not like she was ever as clear as this before…"

"So what do you remember?" Dean asked. If they weren't going to Bobby's to hole-up until they could get rid of this spook, then he could at least get an idea of what they were dealing with in the meantime.

"Just hints really, almost like dreams…like right before I'd fall asleep or wake up in the morning, I'd think that I'd see something…a swish of dark hair, or an outline of someone at the end of the bed… a feeling of a hand running through my hair. You know, the cliché stuff, not like anything that we've seen or hunted, so I always just put it down to my imagination. I was tired, or working too hard. For a while, at Stanford I even convinced myself that it was Jess…"

"At Stanford? You mean it's been going on that long?" Dean asked shocked. Agreeing to stay was looking like a stupider and stupider decision by the second.

"Yeah. Looking back I think it started maybe a year before I….umm…left."

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" Dean asked, something dark and angry starting to grow and spread through his stomach at the mention of Sam bailing on them again—on him.

"Why didn't I say that I thought I was seeing something everywhere we went? Tell Dad? He would've—"

"He would have done something Sam! Christ, he and I would have torched every grave in the county if we had to!"

Sam shook his head, "He would have told me I was being ridiculous. He would have salted the room, given me a shotgun loaded with rock salt and carried on as usual. He'd do what he always did," Sam said thinking of the time when he'd told his father he was sacred of the shadows in his closet. Daddy dearest had given him a .45 and continued hunting the poltergeist they'd been after. It had been the last time that Sam had ever confessed anything to his father.

"I would have believed you," Dean said, holding Sam's gaze until he looked away.

"I didn't believe me Dean. It was just a few times, how was I supposed to know there was anything more to it than an overactive imagination? If every time I thought I had a dream about a beautiful girl standing over my bed, I ran to you or Dad, I barely would have ever done anything else as a teenager."

Dean grinned, "True enough," he agreed. "So," he said, sitting back in his chair and running a hand over eyes that were gritty from no sleep the night before. Playing tag with zombies in the cemetery all night didn't exactly leave one bright eyed and bushy tailed all morning. He got up and crossed the room, ripping open one of the packages of coffee on the table he poured it into the small drip coffee maker that looked like it had seen better days. "This ghost has been haunting your ass for years huh?"

"Looks like," Sam was relieved that his brother was taking this as well as he was, but something kept him from letting out the breath he'd been holding all together. Dean just wasn't about to accept something supernatural hanging around and carry on as usual—so Sam kept waiting for the other shoe to fall.

"Well then I guess we'd better be ready for whenever she decides to pop in on us again," Dean said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a sawed off shot gun and a few shells filled with rock salt.

Sam cleared his throat, ready to start in with the 'she didn't seem dangerous' argument again, but Dean cut him off.

"Sammy, she's been stalking…haunting, whatever you for years. It's not as if she's about to just give up and leave well enough alone now that we know she's here—although that would be the smart thing to do. Get some sleep Sammy, she'll be back, and I'm not going to let her surprise me again," he said, loading the shotgun with a click.

* * *

Sam leaned back into the bed, punching the pillow into something that resembled a fluffy ball and shoving it into a better position underneath his head. He'd been tossing and turning for the last four hours while Dean sat guard by the door, shotgun on the ready. He'd tried arguing that if the girl had wanted to hurt him she could have done it years ago, but Dean was in one of his stubborn moods and refused to hear Sam's arguments—in his mind anything that was after his little brother was evil, and it had always been his number 1 job to take care of Sammy. Just once Sam wished that Dean would let him take care of himself.

He didn't know why he hadn't mentioned the strongest argument that he had for why the strange ghost girl didn't mean them any harm—he may have glimpsed her in the shadows a few times over the years, but he'd never heard her voice before tonight. And tonight he'd heard it twice, once in the motel room with Dean…but for the first time before that in the darkness of the cemetery before the zombies had burned and died again. She'd saved them both, and Sam was willing to bet that it wasn't the first time either.

He wished that Dean would listen to him. He wished that she would come so that he could prove to Dean that she wasn't dangerous to them. He wished that she wouldn't so he wouldn't be proven wrong.

"Can't sleep?" Dean asked, as he tossed onto his back again.

"Well it's not exactly as if you sitting there with a loaded shotgun is really relaxing," Sam sighed, giving up.

"Don't know why not, I've always found something comforting in guns. And it's not like I haven't spent a lot of nights like this." Dean's hands moved slowly over the smooth handle of the shotgun, the wood worn from years of hands—mostly his, holding onto it. He couldn't count the number of nights that he'd spent like this, their Dad handing him this very gun before heading out on a hunt, the almost ritual goodbye; 'take care of Sammy' so familiar he could almost hear it now.

"Too many," Sam said, drawing his brother back from the introspective mood and looking with concern at the deep shadows that filled the hollows underneath Dean's eyes. "Why don't you let me do that for awhile and you can catch some zzzz?"

"Nope."

"Come on Dean, you're exhausted. Besides she's probably not coming back today anyways—she looked pretty wiped, and I can't remember ever seeing her twice in a day like this."

"No way Sammy."

"Well can we at least talk about the case then?" Sam asked, sitting up and pulling his laptop closer and trying to ignore Dean pouring himself another cup of coffee.

"Sure, let's brainstorm or dialogue some ways to kill Death," Dean said with false optimism.

Sam rolled his eyes ignoring his brother's imitation of a morning person and bringing up his notes on soul stealers, waiting while the file decrypted. "Okay, so we know that Death has been running around this county, using demons and reapers to kill a bunch of people and somehow take their souls."

"And we don't' know how or why," Dean added, with his own particular brand of helpfulness.

"But we do know how many," Sam pulled his half of the list of people killed recently from his pocket.

"And we still don't know why the horseman is choosing these particular people, or how he's controlling their spirits and bodies once they're dead," Dean tossed the dirt smeared other half of the list onto the bed.

"I've been thinking about that," Sam said, grabbing a book out of his shoulder bag and flipping some pages. "It's here somewhere," he mumbled, "ah, it says that at the end of the world the dead are supposed to rise and walk amongst the living again." He held out the book to Dean who snorted when he caught sight of the title: Revelation of John.

"The Rising of the Witnesses has already happened Sam," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah, I was there, I remember," Sam said trying not to remember too much about the night that spirits of the people they hadn't been able to save came back to seek revenge. "This is something different, after the seals have broken and Lucifer walks the dead are supposed to walk the earth too. What if Death just sort of stepped in and used what was already in the plans to sidetrack us?"

"To keep us busy with the bodies while the son of a bitch keeps going after what he really wants," Dean finished, following Sam's hypothesis through to the conclusion. "We're busy running around burning the bits he's not interested in while he keeps reaping souls for his army."

"Exactly," Sam said. "I just wish we knew what was coming so that we could prepare."

"Well we may not know what, but I think I might have figured out the when part of it," Dean said smiling a little at the shocked look that appeared on Sam's face. It didn't hurt to remind his little brother of just who had taught him nearly everything he'd knew about hunting in the first place, every now and then. "I've been going back though our lovely conversations with Death and he said something that first night that's been bugging me—'when the light is swallowed by darkness', remember that?"

"Yeah," Sam said, not quite seeing where his brother was going with this. It sounded more like some cryptic bad poetry reference than anything else, but obviously Dean had picked up some meaning behind the pretty phrase.

"Well I was thinking—and don't look so shocked, please—but light and darkness, it sounds kind of like phases of the moon right? Going from full to nothing in the month. So I looked up the lunar calendar and guess what—not only is there a full moon this month, but there's also a full lunar eclipse that night too."

Sam could feel that inner triumph that he had when Dean first started to speak slowly sink into something heavy and cold in his gut as Dean's tone continued to grow even more forcefully cheerful as he spoke.

"When is it?" he asked.

"In about a week and a half," Dean said.

"So…"

"So we've got about 10 days to figure out how to cheat Death and save the world. Still think that running to Bobby's isn't looking like a good idea?" Dean asked.

"Dean," Sam sighed, knowing that his brother wasn't about to turn tail and run even if Sam did say that it was the smarter idea.

"Just saying that maybe this isn't the best time to have a ghost tailing us that is."

"Tailing me you mean," Sam pointed out.

"Maybe," Dean admitted.

"So what are you thinking then Dean?" Sam asked, already knowing the answer from how Dean refused to meet his eyes and hadn't unpacked any of their gear in the five hours that Sam had been trying to sleep while he stood guard. "You want to just pack me off to Bobby's and leave me there like a piece of luggage while you go off hunting Death and getting yourself killed in the meantime?"

"You'd be safe there Sam. The panic room is totally ghost proof, no way that any spirit could get in to snoop on our plan and put us in danger."

"This place is ghost proof," Sam indicated the salt lining the doors and windows, careful traps and pentagons drawn at every entrance. "I'm not in any more danger in this room than I would be at Bobbys."

"Us," Dean insisted. "it's not just you on this hunt Sam, it's you and me, and you're shadow spirit is endangering both of us right now and will keep putting us in danger as long as you stay. Hey, I'm not exactly thrilled with it being tied to you here either, but as you pointed out we can't just up and leave to figure it out. You can go to Bobby's and stay out of the way until we figure out how to keep this dead chick dead."

"So that's your solution then? Just send me packing? We tried going our separate ways Dean, it didn't work. All it did was drive us closer to the edge."

"I'm not saying forever Sammy," Dean said, gentling his tone and wishing that every time he tried to talk to Sam it didn't turn into an argument. "Just until this hunt is over. Until we can separate you from this spirit, who for all we know is the eyes and ears of Death listening into everything we say!"

"She's not like that Dean, why won't you listen to me for once!? Why won't you trust my instincts?!" Sam hated this, hated the way that Dean constantly treated him like a kid and tried to protect him all the time. He was a grown man and his big brother was still trying to fix every ouch and boo boo—it was why he'd left in the first place; Dad and Dean bossing him around, telling him what to do and god forbid that he should ever have his own ideas about how things should be done!

"Your instincts?" Dean shouted back, the tension of this hunt piled on top of two sleepless nights getting to him. "Your instincts?! Would those be the same instincts that you trusted when you started sucking face with a demon? Or when you trusted that bitch Ruby ahead of your own brother?"

"You know that wasn't me, Dean," Sam said, feeling his adrenalin rise with every word that Dean threw at him and wanting to throw some punches of his own back. His hands curled into fists at his side.

"Well maybe you can see how I might be a little wary about trusting your instincts that apparently tell you we're dealing with Casper the friendly ghost, when the last time you told me to trust something it was a demon that had you guzzling her blood and starting the end of the world!"

Sam felt his jaw clench as Dean's words seemed to push across the distance between them and hit him like a slap in the face.

"Damn it Dean," Sam forced out the words, trying to regain some small measure of calm before this conversation got totally out of control.

"No, come on Sammy, tell me what your amazing and perfect instincts are telling you this time? Come on."

Sam's fist hit Dean squarely on the edge of his jaw, knocking his brother backward and into the edge of the table. He managed to hold onto the shotgun but the cups and coffee maker tottered a little from the impact, before settling. No sooner had they righted themselves then papers swirled off the bed and into an eddy between the two brothers.

"Welcome back," Dean said, bringing the shot gun back up and pointed straight at the figure of a girl standing between him and Sam in the middle of the room. She had shoulder length dark hair that swayed slightly in the breeze and grey eyes. Tattered blue jeans and grey long sleeve shirt picked up the smoky blue of her nail polish, the edges chipped and jagged.

"I figured you'd show up if he got pissed enough. Sorry Sammy," he said, starting to circle around to stand beside Sam but not taking his eyes of the girl.

She stood there, silently, like a deer caught in the headlights with a stunned and surprised look as if she couldn't believe that Dean had come up with a plan that actually worked. She went to move and Dean leveled the shotgun on her, finger tightening on the trigger.

"Wait," she said, bringing her hands up from her sides slowly in a gesture to show that she was unarmed. "I don't understand…you can really see me now?" Equally slowly as if holding her breath, she turned to Sam, her grey eyes large with almost painfully denied hope. "Sam?"

He nodded, suddenly cautious and unsure of how to proceed now that she was standing in front of him again. All the argument's he'd made to Dean about how she wasn't dangerous seemed to disappear given his experience with ghosts, yet something still told him he could trust her.

"Bright as day sunshine," Dean said, clearly not suffering from any of the same doubt as Sam. "And I'm not buying that 'I come in peace' crap either," he said, cocking the gun and firing two rounds straight into the girl.


	13. Chapter 13

A Supernatural Ghost Story; Chapter 13;

The shots sounded loud in the room and embedded into the wall beside Sam with a thump and spraying of salt—passing straight through the girl like she was made of mist or air. There was only a slight wavering of her form before she stood clear in front of them again.

"I can walk through walls and you think a bullet is going to hurt me?" she asked, managing to sound somehow both disappointed and angry at the same time.

"Shells full of salt sure should have!" Dean said in confusion, cracking the gun and checking that he had in fact placed salt rounds inside and hadn't gotten mixed up and loaded blanks—hell there was a first time for everything. But sure enough the freshly packed salt dusted the outside of the metal casings.

"Dean?" Sam asked, carefully inching back towards his brother.

"You're guess is as good as mine here Sammy," Dean responded, weighting the options of whether they'd be better to stay and try and fight a spirit that seemed immune to salt or make a run for it. "Why don't you tell her how un-dangerous she seems now?" he suggested, knowing that Sam would pick up the hint and keep the focus off him for a minute.

Sam rolled his eyes but stopped moving and turned his attention back to the girl again.

"What's this about salt?" she asked slowly, looking nervously around she ran her hand over some of the rock salt embedded into the wallpaper. It was almost like she was fidgeting…do ghosts fidget Sam thought?

"Salt is supposed to keep out spirits," Sam offered, an olive branch tentatively extended. "Protection against ghosts."

"Well then you're going to need a hell of a lot more than this," she said gesturing to encompass the various thick lines drawn around the windows and doors.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Dean asked harshly, moving up behind Sam again but using his brothers' larger body to shield what he was doing slightly.

"Just that there's a lot more ghosts in this town than only me, and--" she started, but just then Dean lunged around Sammy, the tire iron he'd retrieved out of the trunk of the car earlier gripped tight in his hand he swung it as hard as he could at her head. He had the brief satisfaction of seeing her flicker slightly before reappearing—and sending him flying back to hit the wall and fall forward onto the mattress face first.

"and not all of them like you nearly as much as I do," she finished, breathing quickly—whether in anger or exertion Sam couldn't guess, but his questioning was confirmed when she swayed and nearly stumbled a moment later. He reached out to help her automatically before remembering that he couldn't touch her and pulling back.

Dean rolled off the bed, reaching for the shotgun again but before he could shoot again Sam stepped between his brother and the ghost-girl.

"Wait a second," he pleaded, his hand holding down the barrel of Dean's gun while the other was stretched out as if he could hold the girl in place and powerless. "Let's just everyone take a moment and breathe okay?" Looking back and forth between them, he followed his own advice, taking a deep breath and turning his back on the girl while he tried to make his brother see past the all-encompassing need to protect him.

"Dean," he whispered, barely getting any response from his brother who had locked eyes with the ghost behind Sam's back and looked like he was daring her to make a move. "Dean, listen, she said there were other ghosts here right? So she can see them, talk to them maybe and interact. We can use her to figure out what's going on here—how Death is controlling all these spirits."

"And if she's with them?" Dean asked, not for a second taking his eyes off the ghost where she stood quietly across the room.

"We're not exactly getting anywhere fast on our own this time. We've run down every lead and all it's given us is dead end—dead ends full of killer zombies," he pointed out and was rewarded when Dean grunted in response.

"And if she turns on us Sammy, what then?"

"What _then_?" Sam repeated, trying to keep his voice down. "What would we do now? Salt rounds fly through her, iron doesn't have much effect and we have no idea who she is to try and locate her bones to burn them. If she decided to make a move now, our options are pretty much run or die, or both."

Dean stood his ground another moment before sighing loudly and lowering the gun. Sam was right. At least keeping things peaceful for now could give them more time to figure out how to dust this ghost later, and as long as he didn't let his guard down she wasn't about to get the jump on him.

"Fine, but I don't' have to like it Sammy," he backed away slowly to sit on the edge of the bed and watch warily while the girl stood, slightly transparent in the light from the front window.

Sam took another deep breath and turned back to face the girl, noticing when he looked at her closely this time he could see how tired she looked, and was startled to make out the outlines of the flowered wallpaper through her form.

"Okay, Dean's put down the gun…"

"Barely," she breathed, glaring at where Sam's brother sat behind him on the bed.

"..and you're not going to send anyone flying again right?" Sam asked, approaching her carefully like he would a wild animal and trying to make his voice soft and soothing.

It took a moment, but the hostility faded from her eyes and she seemed to begin to relax. She nodded and Sam found that he could breathe again.

"Alright," he said moving forward a little more until he was even with the edge of the table, its width the only thing that stood between them and since she was a ghost that wasn't much of anything at all really. Taking another deep breath Sam slid into the nearest chair, trying for all he was worth to appear calm and easy. Even he didn't spend a lot of time talking with spirits…it wasn't really part of his job description.

"So you said there are other spirits around, how do you know that?"

"I see them," she confessed quietly, still looking uneasily back and forth between him and Dean. "Like that man—you went to see his wife when you first got into town. He was possessed by a demon, forced to kill those people in the drug store before he shot himself."

"Mr. Walker," Sam supplied the name easily, remembering the photo of his wedding day on the mantel that his widow had been unable to look at.

"Do you know why?" Sam asked gently.

She shook her head and Dean automatically jumped up making her tense again, "See? This is a waste of time Sammy, she doesn't know anything. Hell, she's probably rooting for Death to win this thing."

"Death?" she asked confused.

"Yeah, Death-- big daddy Reaper. You mean you missed him nearly kicking our ass in the cemetery last night?" Dean snarled, tired of sitting around and playing nice with girls who didn't know when they should shut up and stay dead.

"That was Death?" she asked skeptically, but with a hint of worry too.

"What did you expect?" Dean asked harshly, "Angels with halo's and wings and trumpets?"

"I didn't expect it…him to be so….empty," she said shuttering with the memory. "So full of darkness and fire…his eyes _burned _with it… like pure evil, but it was so cold...so full of nothingness."

Dean stopped raging as her words sunk in and seemed to pull him, back through the months and nights and straight back into hell. The black fire like ice that seemed to both burn and freeze at the same time, sometimes managing to melt his skin down to the bones, other times cutting like an ice cold blade…it was hellfire she was describing, and Dean knew it intimately.

"I don't remember fire," Sam said, trying to get the conversation under control again and not show how concerned he was at Dean's sudden silence.

"I do," Dean said, but shook his head and walked away a little as Sam moved to go to him. "It's hellfire," he explained shortly. "Makes sense that Death would have some since he's spent so long penned up down there."

"But they had it too," she whispered confused, drawing Sam's attention again and he nearly cursed as she shimmered before his eyes, fading fast.

"Who?" he asked, needing the answer before she disappeared.

"The souls," she said meeting his eyes with her own dark grey ones as smoke seemed to come up around her and make Sam's vision hazy. She reached up and gestured on her forehead as if at a marking or a brand. "The souls that he put into those bodies again…the ones that burned."

* * *

Sam dug his hands into his pockets as he stood on the front steps of the library and tried once last time to convince the elderly librarian to let him stay after hours and keep researching. It didn't work and he slumped back, feeling the cold cement still damp from the rain earlier even through his jacket while he watched her walk away. He could pick the lock, it certainly wasn't the most complex lock he'd ever worked, nor was the basic alarm system inside that much of a deterrent…but somehow heading back inside to do more research just didn't have the usual appeal right now.

After the ghost had vanished before his eyes—for the second time that day, he'd spent the next hour convincing Dean that they should trust what she said, and then the next hour after that arguing for Dean to get some sleep while Sam did a research session solo. He winced remembering the volume that particular argument had escalated to, and it had taken him promising to do some extra research on other ways to keep out ghosts in order for Dean to let him go alone.

Not like that had proven useful—everything said basically the same thing; salt and iron, iron and salt, salted iron. He did find some info about herbal lore on getting rid of spirits but he doubted if burning hemlock and oak under the crescent moon would do much now after she'd been following him around so long…Why was she following him anyways?

"What's so special about me anyways? Why would anyone follow me around?" he mumbled quietly to the dark as he sat down on the front steps of the building, still trying to make up his mind whether to break in or give up and pick up some food for Dean on the way back to the motel.

"You're the first thing I remember," the voice came out of the shadows, sounding weak and ghostlike even if you didn't recognize it and know the source like Sam did. He was barely surprised this time at the sound, looking up to find a dark outline of a figure standing in the shadows of the doorway. Almost as if he'd been waiting for her, expecting that she'd come.

"Or the last," she said, moving to come and sit beside him still looking pale and grey. She smiled at his look of confusion, "I know I'm not making much sense. It's been so long it's not really all that clear to me anymore. I don't' remember much about…life, about being alive. I remember darkness, and smoke," she said quietly, her eyes taking on an introspective look while she watched the darkness of the street in front of the building disappear as the streetlights flickered on. "And I remember you. When I…" she struggled to find the right words for what it was like to die and then be aware again, "…woke up, you were there. I didn't know where else to go, or what to do. No one could see or hear me, I was all alone, but somehow, when I was near you I felt less on my own. And I just, kind of, stayed."

"Why?" Sam asked, his voice seemed loud in the dark, making him remember that he was real, he was alive and she wasn't.

"Because you seemed familiar somehow. You made me feel safe" she confessed it quietly, glancing up to meet his eyes and then away again quickly and if embarrassed by what he might see in her own.

"Do you, do you remember your life?" he asked, partially curiosity and partially because if Dean was right the more clues they had about her life the more likely it was that they would be able to find her remains to salt and burn them.

She shook her head, dark hair falling in straight lines again to frame her face. "I've tried to, but it's all just darkness and smoke. I think," she said hesitantly, "that maybe when you die, you're not supposed to remember much about your life. That way you don't miss the details."

"So you don't remember anything? Not even your family? Your name?" Sam couldn't imagine anything worse than forgetting who he was, forgetting Dean and Mary and even his Dad.

"Nope."

"A regular Jane Doe?" he asked smiling slightly and thinking how many bodies he'd investigated with that distinction over the years that it was ironic now to have a spirit with the same name and no body. "It kind of suits you," he said reaching out as if to tug on the end of a dark strand of hair. "And I do need something to call you now that you're going to be hanging around and I can see you and all."

"So Jane?" she asked and Sam could see the stars reflected in the dark grey of her eyes.

"Jane," he said nodding.

* * *

A/N: There's something fitting about introducing Jane for the first time in Ch13. I could say I planed it like that, but really it just sort of worked out ;p

Anyways, hope you enjoyed! Reviews are love and Happy Reading! ~Xan


	14. Chapter 14

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 14;

Sam closed the book and set it on the seat beside him but he could still see the words floating on the backs of his eyelids. Over the past week he'd read, and re-read that same chapter on soul stealers so often that he could probably recite it by memory at this point. And still they were no closer to figuring this out, but the clock was slowly ticking down.

"Another three days until the new moon," Dean pointed out, slowing the car as the wheels crunched on the gravel driveway and small stones flew out behind them.

"I know that," Sam said, trying not to sound as angry and frustrated as he felt. The last week had been quiet, no more zombies, no more ghosts acting up…hell, half the time Sam spent wishing that there was a little more supernatural activity going on. He hadn't seen Jane again since that night on the library steps…she'd looked so exhausted, concentrating on holding herself together so hard, he hated to admit it, but he was actually worried about her. What if something had happened and she couldn't come back? The rest of the time he spent berating himself for worrying about the death of a ghost—surely that was a good thing right?

"And then Death's supposed to ride," Dean interrupted his train of thoughts. Dean had been happy at least that their neighbourhood ghost hadn't reappeared again. Not like it stopped him from salting Sammy in bed every night; a thick line surrounding the whole bed and burning oak and hemlock in the bathroom when he thought that Sam wasn't watching.

"Know that too," Sam said, losing the battle with keeping the frustration out of his voice.

Dean pulled the car over and parked. He sat silently for a moment before turning off the engine, then reaching out to straighten Sam's tie from where his brother slumped in the passenger seat. "I just wish that we could do something to stop his damn soul army from getting so big," Dean said, taking one last look at himself in the mirror and deciding that he looked as much like an FBI agent was he was going to, before getting out of the car.

"Ready?" Dean asked, leaning in the open window when Sam didn't move.

'Yeah," Sam sighed, reaching for his own door and wondering when he'd started thinking of mass homicides as just another part of the job. "I'm coming."

"So you said that he just walked in and started shooting?" Dean asked, stepping a little further back from the slightly green deputy who was stationed at the outside of the building, and hoping that the poor guy didn't throw up on his shoes. Clearly he'd been delegated to the other side of the yellow police tape that ringed the entrance because his colleagues shared this same concern for the preservation of their footwear.

"That's what the tape shows," the man said, swallowing convulsively. "Walked in, smiling and stopping to talk to the clerk at the desk, and everything was normal. Suddenly out of no where, he pulls a gun from his briefcase and just started shooting _everyone_."

"Any survivors?" Sam asked, his fingers tightening on the small black notebook he carried as an FBI agent.

"Not a one," the man stuttered and paled even further. "The whole courthouse full of people, the judge, lawyers, clerks, security…hell even the prisoners…all gunned down…and the blood, I've never seen so much…" he swallowed again, bringing a hand up reflexively to cover his mouth and he staggered as the memory overwhelmed him.

Sam stepped up towards him, a hand closing over his shoulder and his face creased in concern, "Are you alright?"

'"Uhhh, Sammy…" Dean started, trying to warn his brother; sometimes Sam's caring nature got in the way of his common sense.

"Wha--?" Sam started before jumping back quickly as the deputy gagged and then threw up at his feet, some of the vomit splashing off the gravel and onto his neatly pressed black suit pants. They all stood there for a moment, Sam's eyes blinking in surprise and self annoyance that he didn't see the obvious coming, before the deputy got a hold of himself and started apologizing profusely.

"Gosh, oh, I'm so sorry…it's my first homicide, and well, the blood…." He trailed off looking pale again, and Sam squeezed his shoulder once, a tight smile on his face before stepping further away this time.

"Don't worry about it," Sam mouthed emptily.

"Happens all the time," Dean added, trying to smother the laughter in his voice as Sam turned a withering look on his brother before slashing at the yellow tape and stalking into the building.

"Hey! Wait up Sammy!" Dean called out, starting into the building and catching up with Sam in a few steps. The entranceway was lined with brown uniformed officers, but still their numbers couldn't hide the bright splashes of blood that stained the marble floor or wooded crests of justice that were mounted on the walls.

"Don't start Dean," Sam said, still ineffectually wiping at his pant leg with the shoe on the other foot. He seemed unconcerned by all the blood surrounding them. The bodies had been removed by now, but the aftermath of a 12 person murder wasn't something that even Dean was used to seeing every day.

"I know that Defense Attorneys can get a little wacked, too much associating with criminals all day, but this is insane," Dean observed.

"What about the end of the world did you expect to be civilized and sane?" Sam asked, looking dead cold at his brother and giving up on removing the look—or smell—of vomit from his person before walking past where the security desk used to be and over to the officer in charge.

"Nothing, but it didn't have to be this," Dean muttered quietly to himself as he stared at the blood splatter. "This was overkill. This was fun."

Sam threw his jacket onto the chair that sat just inside the door to their hotel, scowling in disgust at the sour smell that came into the room with him and glaring at his pants. The car ride back had been nearly impossible, even with the window rolled down and the only thing that had kept him from stripping or complaining was the sure knowledge that Dean would tease him mercilessly for having the nose and sensibilities of a girl. But then Dean had been strangely quiet on the ride back himself.

His shoes thumped against the wall beside the chair, and Sam started in on his pants as he heard the door close behind him. His fingers fiddled with the metal buckle on his belt, but he looked up when he heard Dean sigh and the bed creak from beside him. His brother lay stretched out on his back, hands rubbing at his eyes and looking the picture of defeat. Sam stopped dead, his fly sagging open but he didn't notice.

"Dean?" he asked hesitantly. "Are you alright?' A few years ago he would have thought it impossible to think of his brother and the word _Defeat_ in the same sentence. Hell for most of his childhood he'd grown up practically worshiping the very ground that his big brother walked on and trying to be just like him, and yet now he couldn't deny how tired and lost Dean looked sometimes.

"No," Dean said, his voice slightly muffled from beneath his hands as they rubbed once more over his face before he sat up and clenched his long fingers into the bedspread. "No I'm not alright. We've seen slaughters before," he looked up meeting Sam's eyes where he stood silently watching. "Damn Sammy, we've even done the slaughtering ourselves when necessary, but in that courtroom today…it was something different, they did that for fun Sam, they _enjoyed_ it…" he trailed off, eyes falling away to settle at Sam's feet. "Hell I don't blame that poor kid—but look at you," he exclaimed, voice returning to normal and he forced a smile as he saw the pained and lost look enter Sam's eyes. He was the big brother here… _look out for Sammy_; the familiar refrain echoed in his ears and he fought down his fears, trying to be bright and bold for his brother. "Toss me your shoes and that rag while you go clean up," he motioned at where Sam's shoes lay discarded behind him.

"Dean," Sam said and only got as far as his brothers name before he ran out of things to say. What could he say to that? Dean was right, whatever had killed those people in the courtroom had enjoyed it. Had specifically chosen that setting to mock whatever justice might have existed in this town, or in the minds and hearts of two brothers that happened to be in the town at the moment. And Sam had absolutely nothing that he could do to stop it. Oh, he could voice the old platitudes; we'll come up with something, tomorrow will be better, Bobby's probably going to call with the answer any second now…but they all rang hollow. Truth was that they were running out of time until Death personified strolled into town and everyone and everything died horrible and blood to feed its army, and Sam had nothing that he could do, or say to change that.

Dean looked up, his eyes crinkling in sympathy at the effort that Sam was making to try and find something…anything to give him hope, but knew that it was a losing battle from the get go. They were facing the apocalypse and nearly certain death, sooner or later that truth had to catch up to them.

"Toss 'em here," he said softly, then as Sam's foot swung he finally found the necessary motivation to bring a real smile to his lips; "You stink like a barroom floor."

"Bitch," Sam replied, a smile lighting his own face before he stalked into the bathroom.

"Jerk," Dean said, picking up the closest shoe and starting to work the mud and flecks of partially digested food off the patent leather.

Sam slipped his feet out of his pants and turned on the water in the sink, wondering briefly whether hot or cold would be better while he stood in front of the mirror in his boxers, socks and dress shirt. The tie had been torn off and tossed into the backseat of the impala in frustration within the first few minutes of being back in the car. He looked at his reflection trying to see a hint of the boy who found such excitement in this life and so much to admire about his big brother who was so good at hunting what went bump in the night…or any resemblance to the man he was on his way to becoming at Standford, who still fought to protect people and make his brother proud in a different way…but all he could see was the grey hardness in his eyes, and something dark and cold looked back at him, so unfamiliar that he was glad when the steam from the water started to fog and cloud the surface.

"Well if there's one good thing that's happened in the past few days, it's that your ghost girl seems to have disappeared along with all of Death's other goonies" Dean called from the other room.

Sam closed his eyes, feeling his hands automatically clench in the wet and soapy fabric of his pants. His brother still refused to believe that she wasn't working with the horsemen and didn't mean them any harm…and Sam still hadn't found the words to explain what he'd seem happen in the graveyard that night: how she'd saved them.

"Come on Sam," Dean exclaimed, reading his brother's silence through the partially open bathroom door as clearly as if he'd spoken out loud. "She shows up right when we're close to finally lassoing this horseman, demons and zombies and soul stealers roaming this town, disappears right when everything goes quiet again and you still won't believe that somehow that ghost is involved with Death?"

"She's not just 'that ghost' Dean," Sam said quietly, eyes watching as bits of unidentifiable lumps floated around his fingers in the sink. "Her name is Jane, and she's not here to hurt us."

"God damn it Sammy!" Dean swore and Sam heard the thump of something—probably his shoe, being thrown against the wall near the bathroom door. "She's not some stray puppy or something that you can name and keep or something! She's a ghost, she's dead and sooner or later you and I are going to have to find a way to make her stay dead. We hunt ghosts. We kill them. We don't name them and keep them around."

"Her name is Jane," Sam repeated, his voice firm and he finally found the confidence to look up from the water in the sink and gaze into the mirror once more. His reflection looked back at him, but it wasn't so strange and unfamiliar anymore and he paused to wonder what had changed…but then the steam blew as if an invisible breeze came in through the open door, and he caught the outline of dark hair over his shoulder. "Sam.." a quiet voice whispered, no more than a breath from behind his ear. A smile lifted the corner of his mouth as the grey mist gathered into a pair of dark eyes, her head peaking around his shoulder and the outline of hands, nails in chipped blue polish hovered lightly over his own where they were submersed in water.

"And she's not here to hurt us."

A/N: So I'm completely not even close to finishing this story before the season finale tomorrow. Le sigh. And I know that Kripke is going to wrap up the storyline in some amazing and dramatic way that leaves my pathetic plot line in dust and ashes….BUT, we persevere and carry on. I can't decide whether to write in the last two episodes of this season (aka more obviously steal directly from the show) with my characters, setting, etc. or continue as I planned and just ignore the fact that Kripke's finale is awesome. (Clearly not watching it is also not an option). Gah. Thoughts on my dilemma?

Hope you enjoyed reading! ~Xan


	15. Chapter 15

A Supernatural Ghost Story; Ch: 15

"That's the stupidest plan I've ever heard," Dean said, taking another big bite out of the maple doughnut before setting it back down and reaching for the cup of coffee.

"Hey you're the one who keeps insisting that I'm the smart one," Sam retorted. He pushed the slices of fruit around on his plate, not sharing his brothers' un-ending appetite but trying to make an effort so Dean wouldn't worry.

Dean spluttered, burning his tongue on the hot liquid as he choked. "Do not."

"Then why are you always calling me 'geek-boy' and 'nerd'?" Sam asked astutely, smiling for the first time in a long while for at getting one up on Dean.

"Weelll…" Dean stalled, eyes wandering to the waitress who was taking the order two tables down from theirs. She finished scrawling down the last item and looked up, her eyes meeting Dean's and seeing him watching her, she smiled suggestively before walking away giving him a great view—and an even greater response. "It's obvious that I'm the pretty brother, so you've got to be something,' he said wittily, then dodged as Sam's wadded up napkin flew past where his head had been only moments before and bounced to the floor.

He was just balling his own into a weapon of deadly force and accuracy when Sam turned serious again.

"If you've got any better ideas, I'm all ears."

Which was the problem right there. Dean didn't have any better ideas and they were running out of time. Sam had to suggest something—even if it was practically suicidal, because with only two days left until Death rode he was getting desperate. And Dean spending most of the morning trying to talk him out of it hadn't improved his mood.

Dean dropped his napkin back onto the table, looking forlornly at the last few bites of the doughnut for a moment before popping it whole into his mouth and smiling when he saw Sam grin and shake his head at his brothers' antics. Just like Dean knew he would.

Sam was trying to sound sure and confident, but inside he debated about whether they were making the right choice. Months ago when Dean had said with such bravado that they were going to bring the fight to the devil, Sam had never thought that it would get this literal. He'd spent most of the night researching the spell after the idea had come to him, at first hoping that maybe it might work, but then as the hours wore on he'd found himself wishing that somewhere he'd come across a wrench in the plans—some item they didn't have, or some part that they couldn't do. Something—anything, so that his crazy half-assed plan wouldn't keep looking like their best shot. But it did, and now they were going ahead. All they had to do was wait for was the moon to rise.

"So tonight we summon Death?" Dean asked, after a few hasty swallows of coffee so he wouldn't choke on either his food or the words.

"Yup, tonight's the night," Sam confirmed.

"…just up and blew on me," Sam said, smiling innocently and pasting a look of confused embarrassment on his face. "Must have been glass on the road or something, but ya see, I don't exactly have a spare and if I could just use your phone for a second to call the auto club it would really help me out."

"You don't have a cell phone?" the guard behind the desk asked.

"I'm not a big technology person," Sam lied, thinking of the glove compartment full of cell phones he and Dean had, not to mention his laptop, the EMF reader…and about half a dozen other things he or Dean has assembled over the years.

The guard looked back at him through the thick glass, indecision written in his features. "I'm really not supposed to let anyone in…"

"My girls' waiting out in the car," Sam tried again, hoping the damsel in distress lure might work…even if there was no way he was passing for a damsel himself. "I guess I'm just a little embarrassed about all this, first the damn tire, then I can't fix it…she must have told me a dozen times to get a cell phone…"

The man finally looked up at Sam with sympathy, he looked like a good kid and he sure didn't want to screw up the boys date. "Okay, just for a second, but you really should listen to the lady and pick up a phone—they're just what you need in an emergency," he said, his keys jingling as he unlocked the door and let Sam in.

"I'll go first thing tomorrow morning Sir," Sam said dutifully, holding his breath as the man turned away from him to lock up the door again.

He was just in the middle of turning, when Dean pushed his way into the doorway from where he'd been hiding out of sight in the shadows. The guard stumbled backward, a look of surprise on his face as he was caught off balance by the sudden shove of Dean bursting in, before Dean's shotgun clipped him under the chin and he fell back to the floor, unconscious.

"And a .45 doesn't do too badly in emergencies either," Dean smiled, pushing the door firmly shut and bending to grab the security guard's arms and pull him around the corner and out of sight.

Sam glanced around the empty hallway nervously, before relaxing when there were no sounds of shouts or footsteps coming their way. A sign on the far wall caught his attention, reading "Morgue" and an arrow pointing around the corner opposite from where Dean had gone.

"This way," he whispered as Dean came back into view, and moved off to take the lead—only to curse as something swatted him on the head and he ducked back against the wall, one arm up in defense even as he brought the knife swiping out with the other. But the hallway was clear, and Dean smirked at him before moving ahead to lead the way to the morgue.

"Remember that next time you confuse me with your girlfriend," he said, voice low, and Sam rolled his eyes, but couldn't do much else but follow where his brother led.

The morgue was chilly, the metal drawers that lined the wall opposite the door looking almost frosted from where Sam stood, and he blinked a few times trying to clear his eyes before convincing himself that it must be a trick of the light. It was dim, only a few fluorescent blue glows coming from under the wall-cabinets by the desks that sat along the other wall.

Sam looked back to see that Dean had moved around the tables in the middle of the room and was approaching the drawers now, his movements so slow and wary that Sam's heartbeat automatically sped up: he'd spent too many years watching Dean's back not to know when his brother was expecting trouble. He double checked his own gun, and circled around the table the other way so that he and Dean were flanking one of the drawers in the middle of the row.

Dean carefully set his shotgun down on the edge of the nearest table, his eyes catching Sam's while he pulled a silver stake the length of his forearm from where it was looped into his belt, and he took up position in front of the door. Nodding once to his brother he readied himself and tried not to think about the last time he'd been in this building…the doc's gurgling screams as those things crawled out of the drawers and off the autopsy tables and starting coming after them…their teeth and nails tearing at his skin…

Sam's fingers closed over the handle and he looked back at Dean, counting the breaths and knowing that they were completely in sync. One…his fingers flexed on the cool metal. Two…he started squeezing, feeling the handle give under the pressure. Three! The door flung wide, both brothers raised their weapons staring into the dark hole and waiting for whatever half chopped up dead zombie was going to come tearing out.

But nothing did.

It was as silent as…well, as a crypt, Sam thought looking back at Dean before edging carefully closer to the opening and grasping the metal rim of the shelf that was inside. Taking a deep breath he pulled on it quickly and it slid out to reveal a naked woman inside, the classic Y-incision over her chest and a faint smell of clinical decay but that was all. No zombies reaching out to kill them…just a dead old woman.

Sam stepped back in relief, a frown of slight puzzlement on his face…Death had used the dead people in this town to try and kill them twice now, and yet he was going to let them walk right into Dead-people-central and not take the opportunity for lucky try number three?

Dean wasn't as convinced as Sam was, and as his brother tried to figure out what Death's next move was going to be, Dean was still seeing the trap that might be standing right before their eyes…or laying as it was. He inched forward, arms still taunt with tension and before Sam could stop him, poked the corpse with the end of his silver stake.

"Dean?" Sam hissed, surprise making him forget that just a second ago he'd been wondering if they were really going to get away with this too. "I can't believe you just poked that woman with a stick!"

"What?" Dean said, shrugging his shoulders. She was dead, he was pretty sure she wasn't going to mind…although with all the ghosts hanging around them lately it would be just his luck to get some old lady haunting him while Sam got the cute ghosts. "You have a better way to check that she's not a zombie?" he asked.

Sam spluttered for a moment, thinking but came up with nothing. "Well I wouldn't have poked her with a stick!" he said, not really seeing another way but still not willing to admit that he actually approved of Dean's actions.

"Whatever Romeo," Dean sighed, reaching for the bag he'd dropped below the table when he'd set his shotgun down. "Can we go about finishing this spell of yours now, or do I actually have to die of old age?"

Sam swallowed, both at his brothers casual joking about what they were about to do as much as at what came next. "Sure," he said hoarsely, swallowing again. "Pass me the knife and we'll get started."

Sam finished drawing the last lines of the seal onto the tile floor and tried not to look at what lay in the center of the lines of blood as he stood up. The ritual required the liver, kidney and spleen of three recently murdered people, but if it was one thing that this town wasn't lacking in, it was murder victims. Sam didn't want to think about whether that was fortunate or not.

"We're done," he said, watching as Dean stopped pacing the perimeter of the room and came to stand on the other side of the circle.

"Great, now what?"

Sam sighed, wishing that he wasn't about to face utter mocking. "Umm…we sort of have to…"

"If you say dance nude under the full moon I'm outta here."

"Chant, Dean. We have to chant," Sam waved the paper where he'd copied out the Latin spell in front of Dean's nose.

"I think I'd prefer the stripping."

Sam grunted, whether in agreement or annoyance Dean couldn't tell so he decided it must be agreement. No one in their right mind would choose chanting over strippers any day.

"Just take it," Sam thrust the paper into Dean's hand and taking pity on the befuddled look that his brother got staring at the strange combination of letters and syllables. "Just sound it out," he advised. "And remember v's sound like w's…"

"Yeah, yeah, and y's are e's" Dean muttered, wondering why these damn things had to always been in Latin. Just once he'd like to see a spell done in some language that wasn't dead and impossible to pronounce.

"Aggnus dei. Qui tollis pec cata mun-di. Mi-se. Re-no-bis" Sam chanted, hearing his brother's voice join with his in stumbling accompaniment as he repeated the refrain for the second time. Sam found something soothing about the sound of Dean's voice, remembering the all the nights when Dean would hum meaningless tunes to him when he was young and used to have trouble falling to sleep at night. It had always been Dean who took care of him, while their dad was off on one hunt or another and they were left to fend for themselves in some crummy motel. Not for the first time Sam felt a familiar anger and guilt start to burn in his gut at the thought—it wasn't fair for Dean to have to assume the responsibilities of a parent when he was only a child himself, who dumped that on a kid? What kind of person would do that?

It took a moment before Sam realized that it wasn't just the anger making things look sharper and brighter around him: the lines of blood were glowing brighter with every word they spoke, finally seeming to catch on fire as they finished together, both deep voices ringing in the silence of the crypt—"Vay-na, No-bis, Pa-cem!"

He was forced to close his eyes at the strength of the light, and then suddenly it was gone. It had grown so slowly that Sam thought it couldn't possibly vanish that fast, but as he opened his eyes again all he could make out was the darkness of the basement room and the flickering afterimages of lights.

"Ah, a little midnight snack?" a voice slithered from the middle of the darkness where the circle had been. "How kind of you, but I really must refuse. Don't want to spoil my appetite."

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that," Dean's voice came from the other side of the circle, strong and sure and Sam blinked rapidly to clear his vision and make use of the distraction his brother was buying him as Death turned away from him and the circle to face the elder Winchester. "We've got plenty for you to chew on," Dean said, eyes flicking to Sam.

And Sam didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, catching Death around the neck and feeling a biting cold leach into his arm numbing it instantly at the contact, but even that didn't stop him—he raised his other hand high and plunged Ruby's knife into the man's stomach, feeling the familiar crackle of whatever magical energy enabled it to kill where regular weapons couldn't. He looked up at Dean, his eyes alight with triumph as he pulled the knife free and reached for the ring on the horseman's limp finger, but even as his fingers brushed at the cold metal, Death's hand turned and gripped him tight—one hand crushing Sam's that was going for the ring, even while the other closed over his throat.

Sam remembered gunshots blasting loud into the quiet and someone shouting his name twice before everything went dark.

A/N: I'm still reeling from the season finale tonight but felt inspired to get this chapter out. I hope you liked it! Reviews are love 3 ~Xan


	16. Chapter 16

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 16;

"Sammy!" Dean yelled, his finger squeezing out the last round into Death's back and watching while the bullets sunk in but didn't faze the horseman or even draw his attention away from Sam as he sank to the floor—dead or unconscious Dean didn't know and couldn't hazard a guess with the horseman still standing between him and his brother.

"Sam!" another voice cried and Dean was surprised to hear the same mixture of pain, fear and anger that had been in his own coming from off to his left. He turned and had to do a double take, as Sam's ghost girl stood there, her eyes riveted on Sam's still form as if he was the only thing in the room…or the only thing that mattered.

"You again?" the horseman said angrily, finally looking up and stepping away from Sam. Dean was too worried about his brother to feel much in the way of satisfaction that he'd been right about her being in league with the devil and his horsemen all along.

"Get away from him," her voice was hard and cold and Dean froze at the dark fury he felt coming from her.

"You've got this wrong girl," Death said, but Dean noticed he did step away from Sam…and closer to the girl. "You're in my dominion, and I'm the one who gives the orders here. You're the one who crawls into line," and he raised his hand, frost and ice suddenly swirling around the room to tear and bash at Jane's wavering form—somehow managing to cut deep into skin, muscle and bone that she'd forgotten existed. She trembled in the icy wind, falling to one knee as the horseman advanced on her.

Dean wasn't much concerned with the safety of Sam's ghost—Death could have her if he wanted her that badly, he was solely focused on getting to Sam and getting them both of here before they joined the horseman's spirit army themselves. As Death moved even further away from Sam—and closer to Jane—Dean took the chance to sneak closer to Sam.

Only a foot away he paused, not dropping his gun he reached out with his other hand to touch Sam's face. His heart skipped a beat at how cold Sam's skin felt, but then he felt a gentle breath against his hand and he nearly felt sick with the relief.

Sam was alive.

But he probably wouldn't stay that way for long if they didn't get out of here. Dean turned his attention back to the other drama playing out in front of him in the darkness of the morgue. Death was nearly close enough to touch the ghost now, and she was bent over, her hand stretched out and braced against the floor as if she might fall in the onslaught of ice and wind that the horseman threw at her.

"Sorry Sammy," Dean muttered, dropping his gun and grabbing Sam around the chest he started to quietly drag him toward the door. But the ice and snow chose that moment to close in on them; expanding outwards from the horseman like fog it turned the air into a burning cold that seared his lungs with each breath and literally begin to freeze him to the floor.

Dean felt frost gathering on his eyelashes as they drifted closed…the cold sapping at his strength until he could barely remember why it was so important that he stay awake. He was so tired…surely a short nap would be alright? He'd fought enough…it was time to rest now…the seductive whispers echoed in the breeze around him and he felt himself falling—only to be jolted back into awareness as the cold lessened suddenly and he could breathe again.

"No…." Death whispered, something like amazement and a hint of fear in his voice as it lashed through the storm. "You can't fight me. You can't—you're dead, and the dead are mine!"

But Dean watched as the ghost struggled against the horseman's storm, gaining her feet despite the fierceness of the ice and wind that crashed around her far more than where Dean and Sam huddled.

"Not this time," she said and the ice started to burn, flames licking darkly against the snow and consuming it as they raced outwards from where she stood—straight towards the horseman, who disappeared with a sound like ice fracturing in a high pitched scream.

Dean sat frozen, his teeth chattering so hard he was afraid that they'd crack against one another, and watched dumbfounded as Jane, breathing hard turned and looked back at him and Sam. Or more accurately, at Sam lying a few feet away from where Dean had collapsed in the onset of the storm.

"Sam?" she whispered, and Dean felt a jolt as he realized her expression of fear and hope mixed with desperation was exactly the same one that he'd worn only minute ago when he thought Sam was dead.

"He's alive," he managed to croak out between his frozen lips.

She caught her breath in relief, and Dean thought he saw tears in her eyes…but it must just be the lingering drops of fog in the air.

"Cold, but alive," he clarified, moving closer to his brother and drawing an arm protectively over his still chest as she stepped closer.

Jane stopped and stood still at the look of barely veiled hostility that Dean sent her way. "I just want to help," she said, taking in Sam's blue lips and deathly white skin. "What happened?"

Dean was silent for long moments as he debated whether or not to tell her, but he could literally feel the cold still seeping into him from Sam's chilled body…and there were hints of dark badly frostbitten skin showing from what he could see of Sam's arm that had touched the horseman's flesh.

"He grabbed Death," Dean admitted. "We were going after him with the knife, Sammy grabbed him around the neck to keep him still. When the horseman got a hold of him…he just collapsed."

"Shit," she swore and moved quickly dropping to the ground beside them, uncaring of how Dean pulled his brother protectively closer and away from her. She paused, trying not to let her concern for Sam distract her and raised her hands above his chest, closing her eyes.

"What are you doing?" Dean said gruffly in alarm as more mist began to form between her hands where they rested above Sam's chest. The grey fog seemed to be drawn directly from Sam's body into the air.

"I don't know…just…" she frowned in concentration and Dean was just about to knock her hands away when he felt Sam stir in his arms, his breathing growing deeper and less laboured and his skin looking almost rosy again. Dean held his breath as Sam's eyelashes fluttered then opened.

"Dean?" Sam asked confused, looking back and forth between his brother and Jane. "What happened?"

Dean sighed in relief pulling Sam's now slightly warmer form closer. "Nothing, nothing Sammy…everything's okay now." He looked up and met Jane's eyes where she hovered on the other side of Sam. "Thanks," he growled, hating that he owed her but thanking every angel and god he could think of that whatever she'd done had worked.

"Just get him home safe," she said and vanished.

"I can't believe you two actually summoned Death. I mean, I realized a long time ago that you shared some inherited self-sacrificing death wish, but I never thought you'd take it this far," Jane paced, her feet actually skimming the carpet in her frustration and making the curtains twitch as she passed them. In front of her sat Sam and Dean, each on their respective beds with blankets wrapped tight around their shoulders, blessedly alive and safe…at least until she killed them for being so stupid that was.

"If I had a body, I'd slap you," she said, standing over Sam's silent form with her hands on her hips.

"Honey, if you had a body I'd…" Dean trailed off, tilting his head slightly so his gaze could take in the curves and rounds of her figure from the side, his lips twitching up into a suggestive smirk.

She made a strangled noise of outrage, and Sam shook his head where it rested in his hands.

"Give it a rest, please?" Sam said, falling back onto the bed and hearing it creak slightly underneath him. It seemed like everything had had better days then he was having today. "I'm not in the mood right now."

"Oh you're in a mood alright," Dean sneered sarcastically, tossing the pile of research that Sam had accumulated off the table and spilling onto the bed around him, "Since when do we sit around and chat with ghosts Sam? We don't' make friends with the un-dead, we kill them. Plain and simple."

"Yeah well maybe it isn't anymore."

Dean stared back and forth from where his brother lay unmoving on the bed, his arm crossed over his face. He could barely recognize Sam anymore; first it had been just incomprehension of how Sam's constant defiance of their father had driven such a wedge into their family; then there was the demon blood, the visions and addiction that made it seem like he was being tainted and turned away from the innocent young boy with too-long hair falling constantly into his eyes that Dean remembered…now this.

"Isn't what?" Dean asked, knowing the answer but needing to hear it from Sam's lips to believe it.

"Isn't 'plain and simple'" Sam mimicked, sitting up and staring at Dean…why couldn't Dean acknowledge that this was _different_…but his brothers' expression only hardened and Sam felt something that he'd been holding onto give way with a rush inside of him.

"It's not always black and white Dean! There are shades of grey out there, things, people that maybe have all the cards against them but still can do something good, find the strength to resist and maybe, just maybe, change things for the better. Not everything that's supposed to be evil, has to be: there's always a choice! Dean, why can't you believe that she could choose to be good—to do good!" Sam's voice rang into silence, but both other people in the room could hear the real question that lay behind the words, what he'd meant in that heart-wrenched cry but hadn't spoken:

'why can't you believe that I could choose to be good?'

Dean didn't dare look up, knowing that he'd see the tears threatening to fall in Sam's eyes and the desperate scraps of hope that his baby brother was trying to hold onto so tight…and he'd give in. He'd look at Sam and all the logic and reasons for why he knew that they weren't going to win this fight would fly out of the window—because all he'd see was Sam: his kid brother, his duty, his first job and greatest responsibility…his family. And he'd do anything for his brother. He'd lie and somehow find the strength to keep fighting, somewhere along the way maybe even convincing himself that they might have a shot—a shot at killing Death, Pestilence and hell, even beating the devil…which would only make it more painful when he lost Sammy for good in the end.

He wanted to believe in his brother so much sometimes the desire was so strong it felt like he was choking on it. But he couldn't risk it; he couldn't risk losing Sam…losing everything.

"Because it's not that simple," Dean said quietly in the aftermath of Sam's shouts, and walked out the door without ever looking up.

"Sam?" the voice behind him was quiet and hesitant and Sam felt something cool brush against his neck, like a wisp of fog had settled damp against his skin. "Sammy…"

He turned at the note of sympathy in her tone, brushing past her outstretched hand to stare blankly out the window and watch the taillights of the impala fade away. "I'm okay."

Her silence enveloped his lie, turning it inside out and denying it more thoroughly than any words could have until even he was forced to admit that it wasn't true.

"So maybe I'm not so fine," he confessed, bracing his hands against the window and leaning his head against the cold glass.

"It could be worse—you could be dead," she said, trying for sarcastic optimism but failing. Her voice still shook with the thought of how easily her glib words could have been true…just a few heartbeats later and Sam might not be standing in front of her now. She'd just really begun to connect with him, she couldn't lose him now.

A sob escaped her lips, the small sound causing Sam to turn away from the window and see bright tears falling from Jane's eyes. He took two steps and was beside her, but as he reached out she pulled away, shying away from his hands and Sam suddenly remembered that they'd pass right through her…he couldn't touch her, couldn't wipe away her tears.

"Sorry, I know this isn't what you need right now," she apologized, back turned to Sam she shook her head, dark hair swinging around her shoulders as she fought to hold in the tears, to bury her pain and fear. Sam was here, he was alive and alright…it was going to be okay.

"Hey," Sam said, coming up slowly around her and kneeling on the carpet so he could be on the same level with her smaller body. He reached out one hand under her chin, knowing now that she'd move to avoid feeling his fingers travel through her, he used the threat or promise of his touch to make her lift her head and meet his eyes. "It's okay, I'm here. We'll figure this out, and Dean will come back…we fight nearly half the time anyway, it wasn't your fault," he babbled trying to find the right thing to say and stopping in relief when she laughed, breathless and brokenly.

"Sammy, I just don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you…sometimes I think you're the only thing that keeps me here, keeps the darkness at bay."

He smiled, trying for lightness, "Guess you'd have to haunt Dean then hun?" and was rewarded when she laughed again, easier this time.

"God forbid," she said, retreating back so that Sam could stand up. "You two may bicker but we'd probably kill each other in two days if you weren't here to referee."

Sam paused, briefly wondering who he'd bet on in that fight, but his attention was caught when she moved towards him and he felt the soft coolness of fog settle on his skin as her hands came close to his.

"You can't try that again, Sammy. Promise me."

"We've got to do something," he said, trying not be distracted by the strange and oddly alluring sensation of her insubstantial hands moving against his wrists to settle holding over his own. "Death's going to ride this town into the ground at the new moon, and that's only one day away. We can't just do nothing."

"But you can't kill death Sam."

"I know tonight didn't go as planned, but that doesn't mean that next time won't be better…we know what we're up against now. We'll be prepared."

"You're not listening to me Sam," she said in frustration and he felt the fog turn into ice crystals that bit against his palms before she stalked away from him. "You can't kill death, no one can." She turned back to him, trying to impress her point into his with the force of her voice since she couldn't shake him.

"Death is as old as time itself. As soon as the very first living thing existed, the first cells and glimmers of life, death was there. He can't be killed, not by you or Dean or anyone…and you shouldn't try."

"What?" Sam asked confused now.

"Without death, without the horseman directing things from his cage down below, nothing would die…people who were hurt, or sick or in pain, wouldn't find relief, they just go on and on forever…imagine what would happen if nothing died ever again?" Her words evoked a memory in Sam; sitting in a different hotel room watching while Pamela's wounds started to bleed again and wishing that the reapers hadn't been so quick at resuming their job. But would it really have been better if they'd waited? Pamela had been in pain, barely able to stand and gasping for breath…would it have been kinder to let her stay that way?

"So then there's nothing we _can_ do," Sam said, feeling slightly relieved to finally admit the inevitable. "They win."

Jane flickered and appeared so suddenly in front of him that Sam jumped, hand automatically reaching for the gun behind him on the table before stilling in mid air at the intense look she had in her eyes.

"I said you couldn't _kill_ Death, I didn't say you couldn't trap him."


	17. Chapter 17

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 17;

Dean stumbled out of the bar, one of those nameless places that littered the edge of the highway promising the same too loud country music, busty waitresses and barely cold domestic beer. The first two he could never get enough of, he thought smirking, but the last one might be the one that did him in tonight…he'd lined up more bottles on the bar tonight than he had in a long while…since he'd been first back from hell in fact.

He paused a moment at the edge of the parking lot—easily locating the impala in the darkness his fingers playing with the keys in his pocket while he wished that last call hadn't forced him out into the night. On the other hand, too much longer in the bar and he wasn't going to be able to make it out solo—but then that might not be such a bad thing either…he'd been flirting fairly successfully with the red head behind the bar, at least until her butch boyfriend had come by to pick her up an hour earlier. He'd thought about picking a fight with the guy, at least the satisfaction kicking his ass might take some of the anger away for a while—his anger at Sammy, at the devil, at God, the angels…at himself. But he'd seen the way the chick looked at the guy, with her heart in her eyes and as if the rest of the place was empty, and he didn't want to mess with that…something inside him almost remembered what it was like to have someone look at you like that, and he knew he didn't have a shot no matter how many punches he threw.

So here he was, leaning against the side of the impala, too drunk to drive home to Sammy and too sober to forget why he didn't want to.

"You can take the boy out of the bar," he whispered to himself, sliding into the backseat and reaching down for the bottle of jack that had been a staple under the driver's seat since the car belonged to his dad. "But not beer out of the boy," he smiled taking a long swallow and leaning back against the leather of his baby, his eyes drifting closed while he let himself relax.

"Dean," the voice from the front seat made him jump, gun already leveled against his knee to shoot straight through the seat and into its back before he registered who it was.

"Cas, Damn it. You've got to stop sneaking up on me like that…we'll put a bell on you or something," he could hear his s's start to slur into one another and made an effort to sit taller in the seat, as if better posture would make the lack of pronunciation less noticeable.

"You're drunk."

"And you're a dick with wings," Dean retorted, damn angels and their holy-er than thou trench coat wearing ways.

"Have you forgotten what we're doing here?" Castiel reprimanded, his anger and worry showing through the hard façade for a second. "We're up against demons, the horsemen, the devil himself and you spend the night getting drunk in a bar while the world inches closer to the apocalypse?"

Dean laughed mirthlessly, "I wish I could forget it," he said, taking another swig off the bottle. "I wish I could forget it every damn time I look at Sammy and see that thing looking back out of his eyes from when Zack fast forwarded me back to the future. For someone who's spent eternity watching us ass-monkey's, you really don't know much about us do you?"

Castiel felt his jaw tighten and he closed his eyes, praying to the God that he'd never seen to give him strength to keep faith in Dean Winchester. To help him keep believing that they could win this war. Because Dean was wrong: Castiel was beginning to understand the urge to get drunk and forget the multiple almost insurmountable obstacles lined up against them very well. He knew exactly why Dean was in the backseat of the impala with a bottle of whiskey tonight, and more than a little bit of himself wanted to join him…wanted to fall and forget it all.

"Sometimes I wonder why we pulled you out at all," Castiel said, trying to find the cold emotionless angel he once was in the stark words. Trying to hurt himself as much as Dean, and holding his breath for the reproof and string of obscenities he was sure would follow.

But nothing did. Just the quiet of the night and the slosh of liquid as Dean swirled the bottle in his hands.

"Sometimes I do too, Cas, cause this—" he waved the bottle, whiskey splashing over the rim "this doesn't always look that much different.

I'm not the savior everyone's been waiting for. I know that there are others who are more worthy than I am, why didn't you save them Cas? Why didn't you save my dad? Or Ellen and Jo? Or Jane? Why me?"

Dean slumped down, the bottle falling forgotten from his hand and so he didn't notice Castiel turn around to stare at him in confusion.

"Who's this Jane?"

"What do you mean we can trap Death?" Sam asked, moving to stand opposite where Jane hovered by the desk.

"You can't kill Death, no one can. It would be like trying to undo life itself…"

"But trapping him?" Sam said, trying to bring her back on topic. "How?"

"He's not all powerful yet Sam, normally he would be. They open the cage and he roams free, but this time he's not the one at the reins."

"Lucifer," Sam caught on fast and Jane was reminded once again why'd he would have been a kick-ass lawyer; there wasn't an argument the other side could make that he wouldn't see coming a mile away.

"That ritual he did the night Death rose," Sam continued as Jane nodded encouragement. "It put him somehow under Lucifer's control."

"Not just him, but the souls he's keeping too. Their army is seconded to the devil, the horseman can't direct them as he would like but only as Lucifer tells him to."

Sam sat down at the table, something niggling at the back of his mind but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was…

"But he's been talking like come the new moon it's game over and he's running the show…"

"Well wouldn't you if it was really some fallen angel who was giving you orders? It's bravado Sam."

He looked up, meeting her eyes with those of a hunter who was trained to ask the hard questions and not accept the easy answers; to not believe someone just because he wanted to…maybe needed to.

"How do you know for sure?" he asked. "I can't risk the lives of everyone in this town, hell everyone in this world, on a hunch."

She looked away nervously, fingers raking back through her hair to twirl it round and round blue chipped fingers while she paced. Sam waited her out, wishing that he could make this easier, but knowing that he needed to know the truth once and for all.

"It's not just a hunch," she said finally, sliding down to sit opposite him on the carpet, leaning against the wall. "I can hear them sometimes, in the shadows…they whisper, and it's dark and cold. They say it's not time yet, that they have to wait…that they're not allowed to come after you yet. …they scare me Sam," she confessed it quietly and Sam could hear the tremor in her voice.

"He may raise them, bind them so they can't move on, but it's not him who's controlling them."

"It's Lucifer, but how does that help us?"

Jane looked up, the dark grey of her eyes seeming to burn. "I've been able to keep Death away twice now—barely, but I've done it….and there's a whole army of them out there…If I can hear them, than I can talk to them—maybe even convince them that Death is the only thing holding them back so that they join with me and we can keep Death here and powerless. We steal Lucifer's army Sam—we get them to hold Death here for us. After all, who better to fight Death than the dead themselves?" she asked, "We have nothing to lose."

Castiel shook Dean twice before he grabbed a hold of the hunter's shirt and pulled him roughly towards the front seat to hit him hard across the face.

"Who is Jane?" he asked again, punctuating each word with a shake while Dean spluttered and tried to pull out of his hands.

"Leggo Cas," Dean pulled back and brought a hand to his cheek where it stung from Cas's blow and he felt his jaw click back into place. Someone needed to tell the damn hell's angel to watch his own strength.

"Jane," Castiel repeated for the fourth time. "You mentioned a 'Jane', I don't know this name."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't expect you to," Dean said, still absently rubbing at his jaw. "I don't suppose that Angel's have much cause to shoot the shit with ghosts."

"This Jane is a ghost?" Castiel asked, trying to imagine why anyone would shoot at excrement.

"You bet her see-through insubstantial ass she is."

"What does a ghost have to do with the apocalypse?"

"Well, ya see, that's where Sammy and I disagree…he thinks she's just sugar and spice and keep insisting that she's here to help. Whereas I'm pretty sure she's with Death…what with **being dead** and all. Ever since he learned that she's been haunting him since we were kids—the peeping ghost!—he's been singing her praises."

"Your brother doesn't sing."

"Not literally Cas, jez…if you're going to be flapping about down here you've really got to spend some time in front of the tube—pick up the lingo."

But Castiel wasn't listening anymore to Dean's drunken ramblings. "Why do you think she's in league with the horseman?"

"Other than the fact that she's dead?"

"Other than that yes."

"She shows up when he's around, goes quiet when he's not, we didn't even see her before he was let out of the box…and I don't care what Sam says, just because she sort of fought him off once or twice and maybe saved our asses, it's all just one big lie to get us to trust her…and Sam's falling for it—for her, like a fish in water: hook, line and sinker."

"You're right," Castiel said, interrupting him and stopping him short.

"I am?" he asked confused, gratified that someone finally agreed with him, but not sure as to why.

"The dead are completely under the horseman's control Dean,—they're in his dominion, like the reapers and life itself. There's no way that a ghost, that anything without life could ever stand against him."

Dean fought through the fog of whiskey induced haze to focus on Castiel's words, barely believing what he was hearing.

"Whoever this Jane is, if she could withstand Death then she's definitely not a ghost. She's alive."

A/N: Sorry for the delay! Hope it's worth the wait! 3 ~Xan


	18. Chapter 18

A Supernatural Ghost Story: Chapter 18;

"You barely even held him back before," Sam commented carefully, not wanting to eliminate the plan but not seeing how it could actually work. "And it took so much out of you…we're not talking about a quick battle, all or nothing and it's over in a few minutes. We'd need to hold him off until Dean and I can stop the other horsemen and send Lucifer back to hell…that could take a while…"

"I know," Jane said quietly, straight dark hair framing her face as she stared at Sam in determination. She wouldn't let him risk his life like that again, it had been too close.

"I didn't see you for days afterwards—look—" Sam pointed at her in a mixture of triumph and worry, gesturing at how insubstantial she looked sitting on the floor, the edges of her clothes and hair fuzzy as if disappearing into an invisible fog. "You're still exhausted and weak, how can you hope to fight Death?"

"Not alone," Jane made an effort to try and draw herself together, focusing on the room and Sam so that the haze of grey darkness that was leaking into the edges of her vision would recede. It was getting harder to stay with Sam…harder to see things clearly and she still hadn't lost the chill that had invaded her when she'd pulled the cold of Death's grip out of Sam earlier that night…but then he didn't need to know that. "If I can persuade the rest of the spirits to listen to me, work with me…" she reasoned, trying to convince herself as much as him.

"And how do you plan on that?" Sam asked sarcastically, almost desperate to punch holes in her plan but not knowing why. "You said that even Death didn't control them, Lucifer's directing the show. You want to just walk up and ask him if you can borrow his soul army for awhile to hold his horsemen at bay?"

"Not exactly…"

"Well?" Sam pestered when she stayed silent.

"I thought we'd steal them."

"Oh, like when his back is turned or do we wait for him to go to the bathroom?"

She couldn't help it, the book on the table by his hand suddenly lifted in an unfelt breeze and flew to hit the side of his head before falling with a loud thump to the ground.

"Are you done yet?" Jane asked, concentrating so another few papers rustled threateningly around the table before settling again.

"Yeah…oww," Sam said, rubbing at his head and using the toe of his shoe to push the offending book that had decided to hit him further away. "Did you have to toss it so hard?" he asked.

"I thought I was 'exhausted' and 'weak'" Jane mimicked.

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath in …and out, before trusting himself to give even a brief answer that wasn't full of snark.

"Point taken."

"I'm sorry," Jane said, wanting to get up and go to him but not trusting herself to stand and not fade away. That display with the book had been satisfying but probably not the smartest move. "I know you're worried. This is a lot to have land on your shoulders, especially with Dean being semi out of the game since hell…you fall back on joking just like he does when things get too dark…but Sam, this is going to work. It has to."

"And if it doesn't?" the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, something anxious growing in his stomach.

"If I go up against the horseman and something happens…well, I'm not the one who can die, Sam. I've got nothing left to lose—nothing but you, and I won't watch you come that close again and not make it…I couldn't stand that."

Sam sat completely still watching where Jane sat opposite him on the floor as her words sunk in and shaped a silence around them both.

He could remember it more clearly now—the feeling of someone being with him, watching over him throughout the years; A brief glimpse of someone sitting by his bedside when he was sick with mono and Dean and dad were both out on a hunt; A comforting presence when he'd get so frustrated with their life that he'd run as far and as fast as he could into the night and shout at the stars. He'd thought it was his imagination, then maybe, just maybe, that it was their mom—but ever after her poltergeist has saved them in Lawrence and was destroyed in the process, the feeling was still there. He'd even considered that it might be Jess…but he'd felt it while she was still alive.

He knew suddenly that it hadn't been any of them or the other adolescent imaginings and daydreams that he'd rationalized: it had been Jane.

When he'd felt hands smooth the hair off his forehead in the night, it had been her.

When he'd feel peace and love surround him when he'd been alone and hurt, she'd been with him.

Dean had never believed in angels, in God or the devil—hell, he'd spent a whole week researching different kinds of demons and creatures that might have the same powers as Castiel before he'd finally accepted that an Angel of Lord existed, even when it was standing right in front of him. But Sam, he'd had no problem believing it…because he'd lived with the knowledge that someone was watching over him for years and not even been bothered by it.

Castiel may have appeared to Dean and pulled him out of hell, but Jane was Sam's guardian angel.

And he suddenly realized that he wasn't sure he knew how to live without her familiar presence surrounding him. He'd gotten so used to the feeling of her being with him, watching over him that the last week while she'd been absent had been hell. He'd been moody, snapping at Dean and unable to focus…he hadn't been that much of a wreak since Jess had died.

He moved before the thought to move had even finished forming in his head, the need to shorten the distance between them so intense it was instinct. She was still sitting on the floor, her eyes closed now and Sam could see the blue-grey smudges lingering under her eyes and her skin was a translucent white with fatigue. Her eyebrows and hair were dark lines, stark against her pale face and Sam traced his hand from her temple, imagining that the cool feeling between his fingers was the silk of her hair as his hand moved to rest above her neck.

Her eyes fluttered open at the sensation of Sam's fingers over forgotten skin, and he waited until she looked into his eyes, something questioning and almost fearful in her own.

"I don't think I could stand to lose you either," he admitted softly.

"You won't, I won't ever leave you—I promise," she said, something fierce in her tone that helped Sam relax enough to believe her. "There's a spell—it won't stop them," she said quickly, holding up her hand for silence in anticipation of his next question and was rewarded with a small smile. "It won't release them, or let them choose their own path, but it will…" she searched for the right words—"let them choose **not** to answer. To do nothing, just sit back and watch when Death and Lucifer call on them."

"And if they don't fight, then Death's basically stalled."

"It's a stalemate, and you can move on and try to stop the devil from ending the world without worrying about what Death is getting up to behind your back," she finished.

Sam sat back on his heels and thought about it…it made sense. He hated it and something twisted in his gut at the thought of letting Jane do it, but…

"It makes sense," she said quietly, knowing him so well she could almost hear the thoughts as they raced through his mind.

"What if Death decides to just keep killing people anyways?"

"Draft souls into an army that he can't use? No," Jane shook her head, "Lucifer would just move onto plan B."

"Pestilence," Sam said, making the name a curse. "And if you're wrong?"

Jane closed her eyes for a heartbeat, knowing that she'd won but surprised at how little triumph she felt.

"Then I'm wrong, the spell doesn't work or the souls don't listen, or Death keeps killing people, and we're right back here again—square one. Don't worry Sammy," she reached out, a small puff of breeze blowing past his face and ruffling his hair. "I'll be careful."

"You'd better," he breathed, "I've gotten used to having you around." He was having a hard time believing that he was going to go ahead with this insane plan, and then remembered that he still had to convince Dean and laughed at the thought of what that conversation was going to be like. "Dean's never going to believe this…" he shared, looking over at her, "First a werewolf, then a demon, now I'm falling for a ghost."

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that too much Sammy," Dean said, the door swinging to slam against the wall as he pushed into the room, Castiel right behind him. "Turns out she's not as dead as we thought."

"Dean you're drunk," Sam scoffed, blinking at the waves of alcohol that rolled off his brother to sting his eyes as Dean lurched further into the room.

"And you're tall," Dean retorted, moving around Sam to tower over where Jane still knelt on the floor.

"And the prize for most stunning come back goes to…" Jane commented, trying to surreptitiously use the wall for support as she got to her feet and backed away.

"Shut up…whatever the hell evil son of a bitch you are!" Dean swore and swung the tire iron he'd retrieved from the impala at her—knowing now that it wouldn't banish her like a normal spirit but the motion made him feel better anyways, at least until he almost overbalanced and had to catch a hold of Castiel's trench coat to stay standing.

"Dean, you're being ridiculous," Sam said patiently, moving to grab onto his brother's arm and pull him towards the bed before he hurt himself.

"Am I Sam?" Dean pulled away roughly. "Ridiculous like a ghost that's not hurt by iron? Like a ghost that can cross salt lines?" he swiped at the thick piles of salt on the nearest windowsill, sending grains spraying towards where Jane stood. "Or one that can stand toe to toe with Death and not fall into line like a good little soldier."

"You're the one who knows all about being daddy's little fighter, not me Dean."

"Will you shut up!" Dean yelled at Jane, turning away from her to stare at Sam. "Tell him Cas," he said, holding his brothers eyes and not looking away from the pain and desperation he saw growing there.

"Castiel?" Sam asked hesitantly, looking away from the sympathy he was beginning to see in Dean's gaze.

"It's true," Castiel offered. "As improbable as it may be, Dean is right. There is no way that anything truly dead could stand against the horseman. Reapers follow him and ghosts are bound, all ties to life severed—existing only to serve him. If she withstood a command from Death, then whoever, whatever she is, she's not dead."

"But…" Sam stammered, looking back and forth between his brother and Cas—unable for the moment to look to the corner of the room where Jane stood silent as the grave. "We've seen her disappear, move through furniture, walls—I can't touch her Dean!" He cried, trying to find something steady and firm to orient himself to in this reality that was quickly becoming the opposite of everything he thought he knew. "If she's not a ghost then what is she?"

"That, Sammy, is the million dollar question," Dean said turning and drawing Sam and Castiel's attention with him as he faced where Jane was huddled into the corner of the room, looking pale and alone but defiantly strong.


End file.
